Emerging forest governance regimes emphasise the implementation of social responsibility agreements (SRAs) to enable local communities' access forest rents. While studies have considered SRA implementation in recent years, they are restricted to a few areas and fail to provide insights into wide-scale compliance. This study addresses this by analysing SRA compliance in 36 communities with different forest resource endowments in Ghana. The study found differences in levels SRA compliance with off-reserve actor largely non-compliant. Compliance was motivated by a combination of instrumental, but largely normative factors. Context-specific issues – e.g. low awareness and actor mistrust–enabled non-compliance. The findings suggest that a utopian model and reliance on sanctions alone may not improve SRA compliance in Ghana. Rather, SRAs need to evolve to embrace context-specific norms and the scale of timber contracts. The findings lay a benchmark for SRA compliance monitoring and have extended applications for FLEGT implementation in Ghana and beyond.