Responding to Ecological Transformation: Mental Models, External Constraints, and Manager Decision-Making

Abstract

Ecological transformation creates many challenges for public natural resource management and requires managers to grapple with new relationships to change and new ways to manage it. In the context of unfamiliar trajectories of ecological change, a manager can resist, accept, or direct change, choices that make up the resist-accept-direct (RAD) framework. In this article, we provide a conceptual framework for how to think about this new decision space that managers must navigate. We identify internal factors (mental models) and external factors (social feasibility, institutional context, and scientific uncertainty) that shape management decisions. We then apply this conceptual framework to the RAD strategies (resist, accept, direct) to illuminate how internal and external factors shape those decisions. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of how this conceptual framework shapes our understanding of management decisions, especially how these decisions are not just ecological but also social, and the implications for research and management.

Review of adaptations of U.S. Commercial Fisheries in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic using the Resist‐Accept‐Direct (RAD) framework

“…Unlike previous applications of the RAD framework that focus on ecological transformations, where managers are the ones undertaking RAD strategies, our application of the framework to fishery SESs includes managers, fishers, and supply chain actors as participants with agency to resist , accept , or direct social ecosystem transformation. Managers can facilitate or constrain the number and type of options in any of the RAD strategies available to system participants via regulatory, policy, and management decisions (Clifford et al, 2022 ), yet how system participants act within that decision space determines the transformation's broader social outcomes. This expansion of the RAD framework better reflects the true nature of SESs, where humans are participants within the system, not just external managers of the system's ecological components.…”

Ecological and social strategies for managing fisheries using the Resist‐Accept‐Direct (RAD) framework

“…The actions of fisheries stakeholders are motivated by political and regulatory systems, economic factors, norms, and value systems. Thus, the structure and scale of social systems drive receptivity to management interventions and can affect the feasibility of RAD options for both social and ecological processes (Clifford et al, 2022). Fishery stocks are common pool resources and coordination among stakeholder groups is a prerequisite for effective management (Ostrom, 1990).…”

Resist, accept, and direct responses to biological invasions: A social–ecological perspective

“…In addition to individual and cultural influences on mental models that can drive decisions for managing biological invasions, a third and important contributor to mental models is the understanding of the environmental system (Clifford et al, 2022). Social science research has shown that individuals can vary widely in their knowledge of introduced species, impacts, and consequent preferences for managing them (Niemiec et al, 2017; Shackleton et al, 2019).…”

“…management decision space stakeholders operate within (Clifford et al, 2022). More specifically, preferences for RAD alternatives (i.…”