Office of Protected Resources, National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA , Silver Spring, MD , USA.
Department of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine , Nashville, TN , USA.
PeerJ. 2014 Jun 3;2:e399. doi: 10.7717/peerj.399. eCollection 2014.
Environmental regulations can only be effective if they are adhered to, but the motivations for regulatory compliance are not always clear. We assessed vessel operator compliance with a December 2008 regulation aimed at reducing collisions with the endangered North Atlantic right whale that requires vessels 65 feet or greater in length to travel at speeds of 10 knots or less at prescribed times and locations along the U.S. eastern seaboard. Extensive outreach efforts were undertaken to notify affected entities both before and after the regulation went into effect. Vessel speeds of 201,862 trips made between November 2008 and August 2013 by 8,009 individual vessels were quantified remotely, constituting a nearly complete census of transits made by the regulated population. Of these, 437 vessels (or their parent companies), some of whom had been observed exceeding the speed limit, were contacted through one of four non-punitive information programs. A fraction (n = 26 vessels/companies) received citations and fines. Despite the efforts to inform mariners, initial compliance was low (<5% of the trips were completely <10 knots) but improved in the latter part of the study. Each notification/enforcement program improved compliance to some degree and some may have influenced compliance across the entire regulated community. Citations/fines appeared to have the greatest influence on improving compliance in notified vessels/companies, followed in order of effectiveness by enforcement-office information letters, monthly summaries of vessel operations, and direct at-sea radio contact. Trips by cargo vessels exhibited the greatest change in behavior followed by tanker and passenger vessels. These results have application to other regulatory systems, especially where remote monitoring is feasible, and any setting where regulatory compliance is sought.
如果要使环境法规有效，就必须遵守这些法规，但遵守法规的动机并不总是很明确。我们评估了船只运营商对 2008 年 12 月出台的一项规定的遵守情况，该规定旨在减少与濒危北大西洋露脊鲸的碰撞，要求船长 65 英尺或以上的船只在规定的时间和地点以 10 节或以下的速度行驶。在规定生效之前和之后，都进行了广泛的宣传活动，通知受影响的实体。在 2008 年 11 月至 2013 年 8 月期间，8009 艘船只的 201862 次航行的速度是远程量化的，这几乎是受监管船只过境的完整普查。其中，437 艘船只（或其母公司），其中一些被观察到超过限速，通过四个非惩罚性信息项目中的一个进行了联系。少数（n=26 艘船只/公司）收到了传票和罚款。尽管努力通知海员，但最初的合规率较低（<10%的航行完全低于 10 节），但在研究后期有所提高。每个通知/执法程序都在一定程度上提高了合规性，有些程序可能对整个受监管的群体产生了影响。传票/罚款似乎对通知船只/公司的合规性提高有最大的影响，其次是执法办公室的信息信、船只运营的每月摘要和直接的海上无线电联系。货船的航行行为变化最大，其次是油轮和客船。这些结果适用于其他监管系统，特别是在远程监测可行的情况下，以及在任何需要监管合规的环境中。
