Psychological values and cues as a basis for developing socially relevant criteria and indicators for forest management

Abstract

Criteria and indicators (C & I) have proven an essential tool for managers implementing sustainable forest management, but have been less effective for communication with the wider community. We demonstrate a new bottom-up approach to developing socially relevant C & I using social analysis and psychology-based concepts and methods. Our conceptual framework links the concepts of valued attributes and environmental cues with, respectively, criteria and indicators. We illustrate our approach using thirty-six semi-structured interviews of individual members of the general public and of stakeholder groups in Victoria, southern Australia. The interviews included a modified cognitive mapping task ..