They have looked at how a community's gear owners turn into centrally placed individuals and instrumental in determining which knowledge and interpretation of ecological signals is most dominant.
 
Furthermore, access to crucial fishing gear is often unevenly distributed, forcing villagers to lend the gear from a smaller group of individuals in possession of the gear. This puts the gear owners in a powerful situation.
 
“Those who depend on others for gear use become constrained and gear ownership implies a form of power over those dependent on using it, which in turn may also affect the ability of dependent individuals to change their extractive fishing behaviour. This way the gear owners increase their power to also include the role of opinion leaders", says Beatrice Crona.
 
However, as the research demonstrates, not only are the gear-owners crucial to the villager's possibility to generate a steady income, they are also frequently asked for advice in understanding natural resource dynamics. In effect, this further increases their possibilities to influence others in terms of their use and extraction of natural resources.
 
Comfortably in denial
Unfortunately, as Crona and Bodin found out, the majority of these influential gear owners and opinion leaders demonstrate little recognition of declining fisheries and the potential need for change. Despite government initiatives to mandate local management units to curb declining fisheries and in habitat degradation, no significant changes have yet been seen.
 
Part of the reason might be that they own gears. This could potentially make them less inclined to respond to environmental signals indicating over harvesting.
 
“The fact that they have invested significant amount of money into gear appropriate for current ways of resource extraction, might make them reluctant to change their resource use and management practices which in essence would interfere with the use of their gear", says Örjan Bodin.
 
Who to turn to?
In a search for presumably less bounded, but equally knowledgeable individuals, Crona and Bodin found a small number of individuals who could counterbalance the influential gear-owners.

These “freelance fishers" , i.e. fishermen who borrowed gears from multiple sources, were proposed to be in a less bounded position in comparison with the majority of the other gear-lenders who was depending on one single gear-owner for their access to gears. Hence, they potentially appear as more willing, and able, to take a lead in changing the community´s current use of natural resources.
 
“Freelance fishers considered knowledgeable and their “unfaithful" gear-borrowing behaviour indicates that they may be less tightly bound to one owner. Furthermore, the fact they have no significant capital invested in gear suggests they may also be less likely to be bound by sunken costs of investments and more inclined to change", says Beatrice Crona.

See video interview with Beatrice Crona explaining social network analysis: