Community-based natural resource conservation programs in developing nations face many implementation challenges underpinned by social-psychological mechanisms. One challenge is garnering local support in an economically and socially sustainable fashion despite economic hardship and historical alienation from local resources. Unfortunately, conservationists' limited understanding of the social-psychological mechanisms underlying participatory conservation impedes the search for appropriate solutions. We address this issue by revealing key underlying social-psychological mechanisms of participatory conservation. Different administrative designs create social atmospheres that differentially affect endorsement of conservation goals. Certain forms of endorsement may be less effective motivators and less economically and socially sustainable than others. From a literature review we found that conservation initiatives endorsed primarily for nonautonomous instrumental reasons, such as to avoid economic fines or to secure economic rewards, are less motivating than those endorsed for autonomous reasons, such as for the opportunity for personal expression and growth. We suggest that successful participatory programs promote autonomous endorsement of conservation through an administrative framework of autonomy support-free and open democratic participation in management, substantive recognition and inclusion of local stakeholder identity, and respectful, noncoercive social interaction. This framework of the autonomy-supportive environment (self-determination theory) has important implications for future research into program design and incentive-based conservation and identifies a testable social-psychological theory of conservancy motivation.

ABSTRACT. Public participation plays a role in the development and long-term maintenance of environmental institutions that are well-matched to local social-ecological conditions. However, the means by which public participation impacts such institutional fit remains unclear. We argue that one major reason for this lack of clarity is that analysts have not clearly outlined how humankind's sense of agency, or self-determination, influences institutional outcomes. Moreover, the concept of institutional fit is ambiguous as to what constitutes a good fit and how such fit could be diagnosed or improved. This is especially true for "social fit," or how well institutions match human expectations and local behavioral patterns. We develop an interdisciplinary framework based on principles of human agency and institutional analysis from social psychology to address these problems. Using the concept of "institutional acceptance" as an indicator of social fit, we show how analysts can define, diagnose, and improve social fit of participatory programs. We also show how such fit emerges and is sustained over time. This interdisciplinary perspective on fit and participation has important implications for participatory approaches to environmental management and the scientific study of institutional evolution.

We analyzed 15 years of trapping data on prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) and cotton rats (Sigmodon hispidus) to elucidate behavioural responses to weather by season and time of day. Use of such a long-term data set is rare and ameliorates many of the problems with short-term data sets typically used for such analysis. The trapping was conducted in the east-central part of Kansas (U.S.A.), near the southern edge of the distribution of prairie voles and the northern edge of the distribution of cotton rats. These distributions provide the framework for differing hypotheses as to responsiveness of individuals of the two species to weather phenomena as indicated by the probability of capture. Probability of capture was statistically significantly affected by weather, most frequently by precipitation and temperature. Effects varied with season and between species, and were generally consistent with hypotheses based on the northern (boreal and temperate) history of prairie voles and southern (subtropical and temperate) history of cotton rats and with predation-avoidance hypotheses. Variation in the probabilities of capture of cotton rats was more associated with weather, especially in the colder seasons, than was variation in the probabilities of capture of prairie voles. In summer, capture rates of prairie voles were more susceptible to weather than were those of cotton rats.

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