Fishing for compliments: Legitimate illegality and institutional signaling in the case of recreational fishing in Germany

Addressing the largely overlooked area of illegal action in geography, this study draws upon an institutional framework to examine how actors of legitimate institutions admit to their actions in the face of conflicting regulations. In recreational fishing, the practice of voluntary ‘catch and release’ (C&R) of fish collides with official regulations in most German federal states. Yet, despite the prohibition by law and the threat of criminal conviction, this is widely legitimized as a conservation practice. Grounded on extensive social media research and interpretive content analysis I qualitatively extract the underlying social practices that unite voluntary C&R anglers into a cohesive group. Building on these findings, I propose the strategy of institutional signaling as a means of encoding compliance with common expectations while avoiding explicit acknowledgment of unlawful behavior. In this way, the study sheds light on a relatively unexplored facet of our social fabric, where the realms of legitimacy and illegality intersect.