Assessing local acceptance of protected area management using public participation GIS (PPGIS)

Abstract

Protected area management can be highly contentious. Information about the acceptability of conservation actions can help environmental authorities design policies that are accepted locally, and identify potential areas of conflict between land users and conservation objectives. In this study, we implemented a spatially-explicit method for eliciting public preferences for land use and conservation policy (web-based public participation GIS; PPGIS). We invited randomly selected local residents in two mountainous regions in Norway to map their preferences for consumptive resource use, motorized use, land development and predator-control. We assessed whether local communities favored or opposed these human activities in nearby protected areas using mixed-effects logistic regression and controlling for landscape characteristics, accessibility and demographics. Local residents strongly favored consumptive resource use and predator control regardless of protected area status, and were more likely to oppose than favor land development inside protected areas. These preferences are largely consistent with the present protected area policy in Norway and Europe that promotes traditional consumptive use and the maintenance of cultural landscapes, but restricts land development. Our results suggest that use-based framing of conservation is more likely to resonate with these communities than narratives tied to the preservation of pristine nature and emerging conservation ideas of the rewilding of nature. Mapped community preferences can be a valuable tool for policy makers and stakeholders representing community interests in participatory processes, and for assessing the local acceptance of alternative management actions within protected areas.

PPGIS and Public Use in Protected Areas: A Case Study in the Ebro Delta Natural Park, Spain

“…Participants in the Ebro Delta did not express annoyance or unease regarding place-based conflicts. We encountered no negative or hostile attitude towards the Park for being a protected area, quite the opposite in fact since the opinions were positive and no meaningful differences were recorded between local and non-local users [13,15].…”

“…However, PPGIS is usually criticised for not providing representative or confident results. In our study, 209 valid answers were collected, while a study by [29] that also worked with Google Maps API as a map reference, collected 71 answers and [15] compared two protected sites, collecting 197 answers for one and 189 for the other. Another study [20] reported 117 participants who mapped at least one item on their PPGIS survey.…”

“…Others feel disappointed if their visit is not permitted and blame this on a lack of information about accessibility to these sites. It has been reported that spatial behaviour within protected sites depends on the area's physical characteristics (e.g., dunes, marshes, woods) but also on the general behaviour and civic-mindedness of each society and type of users [15,23]. It appears that trespassing onto reserves or straying from designated trails is less common in some cultures [39] than in others [38].…”

“…Management plans can benefit from all this information and use social hotspots to promote sustainable public use. Other benefits include studying tourist demand [21], identifying areas that are suitable for sustainable tourist activities, and determining local acceptance [15].…”

“…Public use data have implications for planning and management [1][2][3][4][5][6] and have proved to be useful in assessing crowd perception and satisfaction among types of visitors [8].Public Participatory GIS (PPGIS) is a reference procedure for acquiring georeferenced information from non-expert users [11] and engaging public participation by visitors to protected areas in a spatial dimension [11,12]. It has been used to explore the attitudes of local residents towards protected areas [13], evaluate trade-offs between conservation and land use [14], detect the social acceptance of protected areas [15], and map and weigh landscape values [16], conflicts [17], and user behaviour [18]. The spatial nature of PPGIS enables a wide range of events to be placed into coordinates and mapped [19].…”