Abstract
Many conservation interventions are hypothesized to be beneficial for both the environment and people's well‐being, but this has rarely been tested rigorously. We examined the effects of adoption or nonadoption of a conservation intervention on 3 dimensions of people's well‐being (material, relational, and subjective) over time. We focused on a fisheries bycatch management initiative intended to reduce environmental externalities associated with resource extraction. We collected panel data from fishers ( n = 250) in villages with (adopters and nonadopters) and without (control) the conservation intervention 3 times over 2 years. We found no evidence that adoption reduced any of the 3 dimensions of well‐being in the local populations affected by the intervention. There were modest improvements in material ( t = –1.58) and subjective livelihood well‐being ( p = 0.04) for adopters relative to nonadopters over time. The variations in well‐being experiences (in terms of magnitude of change) among adopters, nonadopters, and controls across the different domains over time affirmed the dynamic and social nature of well‐being.