Jason Cons
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Social Science
Coastal fishing communities have often managed shared resources for generations through their own customs and local arrangements, deciding who fishes where, when, and how much. When governments introduce new regulations, those long-standing systems do not simply disappear; they bend, reorganize, or resist in ways that shape whether the new rules work and who bears the cost.
- Fields
Social Science
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
resource management
fisheries
coastal communities
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jan 2027
What they work on
- Test which social and cultural variables shape how coastal fishing communities organize their resource management networks, using interviews and behavioral observations within these communities.
- Trace how traditional resource management networks adapt once new fishing regulations are introduced, drawing on archival analysis and oral history to compare arrangements before and after.
- Analyze adaptive behavior across demographic groups within coastal communities using sampling strategies that account for variation by age, gender, and role in the fishery.
- Translate findings into educational materials and training modules on resource management techniques for students and the public.
More about the research
Understanding that adjustment matters for fisheries policy and for the broader question of how communities adapt to environmental and institutional change.
Why it matters
Fisheries regulations frequently fail or fall unevenly because they overlook the local management arrangements already in place. Documenting which social and cultural factors let coastal communities reorganize successfully could give policymakers and the communities themselves better evidence for designing rules that fit existing practice, and the project's training modules would make those lessons available to students and the public.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Leslie Reeder-Myers
Temple University, PA·Social Science
Test whether sharp drops in an ancient mangrove fishery's productivity were driven by lagoon ecology, political organization or nearby farming, using excavations and sediment cores across two millennia.
Vera Kuklina
University of Maryland, MD·Social Science
Identify and inventory the ice, snow and permafrost 'frozen commons' recognized by Indigenous and local communities and regional stakeholders, and describe how each is governed within its cultural setting.
Mark Schuller
Northern Illinois University, IL·Social Science
Test whether disaster resilience models developed in one community can be adapted to others across different scales. Compare outcomes at multiple sites.
The school
University of Texas at Austin: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 871 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.