Controlling Forest and Land Fires in Riau Province using Collaborative Governance: Support for Smart Environment

Abstract

Riau Province is one of the provinces with the largest areas of forest and land fires in Indonesia. Therefore, a collaboration between agencies is needed, both government agencies and non-government organizations at the national, provincial and district/city levels, to control forest and land fires. This research aims to explore forest and land fire control in Riau Province using collaborative governance. This quantitative research is analyzed with structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques using SmartPLS to analyze data and test hypotheses. Data were obtained from 150 questionnaires distributed to multi-actors consisting of five (5) organizations involved in collaborative land and forest fire control in Riau Province. The results showed that controlling forest and land fires in Riau Province can be done using collaborative governance. This is evidenced by the hypothesis results, where culture significantly influences trust in collaboration. Furthermore, trust also has a positive effect on the output of collaboration, and output also affects the outcome of collaboration. However, facilitating leadership and institutional design does not significantly impact trust in collaboration to control forest and land fires in Riau Province. The collaborative governance model by Ansell and Gash was developed by adding culture and output indicators. In addition, this research also considers the application of a smart environment in discussing collaborative governance to support environmental sustainability in the future.