ForestERA Social Science tools for project evaluation

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Social Science Tools for Project Evaluation

A ForestERA workshop Along with the development of spatial tools for prioritizing restoration projects, the ForestERA Project supports decision-making through a participatory process in which any or all stakeholders in the region can participate in developing recommendations and assessments. While public participation in decision-making is an increasingly popular idea to overcome conflict and promote multi-stakeholder collaboration in the management and restoration of public lands, these efforts are still novel and rarely evaluated to assess their effectiveness. Past experience with the Western Mogollon Plateau Adaptive Landscape Assessment (WMPALA) multi-stakeholder workshops in 2004 demonstrated that collaboration resulted in mutually agreeable recommendations for planning restoration, but the successes and failures of this process have not been formally evaluated.

Our goal with the social science research is to evaluate the ForestERA tools and processes to better understand how they affect participants’ attitudes toward forest management and restoration. Through the use of sophisticated social science methods, we will carry out pre- and post-project evaluations of the collaborative effort to assess what factors (i.e. science-based tools, stakeholder involvement, collaborative planning) are having a greater influence on effective public engagement. Specifically, we will be examining changes in participants’ own preferences, and changes in their understanding of the preferences of others in the process. Ultimately, incorporating social science for project evaluation will not only help us improve the tools and processes to be more effective in supporting decision-making, but it will increase the credibility of the process itself and stimulate more collaboration among the region’s stakeholders.

Social Science Tools for Project Evaluation

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