A value basis for the social acceptability of clearfelling in Tasmania, Australia

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Abstract

In this research, the basis for social acceptability judgements of clearfell harvesting in people's values and beliefs was explored. During an initial qualitative field study the value orientations, valued objects and beliefs about consequences of 18 participants were identified. A hypothesis was then developed drawing on two cognitive hierarchy theories: the Theory of Reasoned Action and Value Belief Norm Theory. It was predicted, that in judging clearfelling people would draw on value orientations toward the natural environment. These would lead them to value objects in the forest and to develop beliefs about the consequences of harvesting for those objects, which would in turn lead to acceptability judgements. In a second study approximately 560 Tasmanians were shown images of a clearfell, burn and sow management system and asked to judge its acceptability. On average, industry-affiliated participants rated clearfelling much more acceptable than did non-affiliated and conservation-affiliated participants. Participants also responded to questions that measured the four levels on the cognitive hierarchy. Structural equation modelling was used to test whether these data were consistent with the cognitive hierarchy model. There was no basis to reject the model.

Introduction

Public responses to forest management have been conceived of in several different ways: first as visual aesthetic responses to the scenic landscape in which emotions are important (Daniel, 2001a, Ribe, 1989); second as expressions of a more culturally based aesthetic (Gobster, 1999); third as expressions of deeply held social values (Bengston, 1994, Hansis, 1995). Debates about the nature of landscape aesthetics (Daniel, 2001b, Gobster, 1999) and values (Bengston, 1994, Hetherington et al., 1994) have helped to refine these different perspectives, but there has been little empirical research exploring their relative explanatory power.

The scientific knowledge available to managers seeking to meet public expectations of forestry comes primarily from just one of these ways of conceiving public responses, visual aesthetics. The large body of research that has assessed the ‘scenic beauty’ of forest conditions has had practical application in predicting how a range of forest practices will affect scenery (Ribe, 1989) and has informed Visual Management Systems (Williamson and Chalmers, 1982), but may provide an incomplete account of public responses to forestry.

Public concerns about forest practices also have a basis in social values (Gobster, 1999, Hansis, 1995). In recent decades new eco-centric values have emerged that are in conflict with the more traditional values in society that emphasise resource use (Gardner and Stern, 1996). These new values have become increasingly prevalent (Bengston et al., 2004, Gardner and Stern, 1996) and it is argued that studying them can provide new insights for managers attempting to align management with public expectations (Bengston, 1994, Hansis, 1995, Shindler et al., 2002, Vaske and Donnelly, 1999).

The extent to which public responses to forest management are conceived of as being based in aesthetic responses or in deeply held values has significant implications for managers. If the public is primarily responding to landscape scenery, then management efforts should focus on careful visual management approaches. But if social values underlie public responses, then these should be addressed in policy setting and management planning.

Bengston (1994) describes three benefits to managers of understanding social values. The first is in establishing forest management objectives. It can be useful for management planners to understand the relative importance to the public of different outcomes of management. An example is Tarrant et al.’s (2003) PVC scale which measures the importance of the 12 primary values for which US National Forests are managed. Three value factors were identified, ‘protection’, ‘amenity’ and ‘outputs’ and it was concluded that the public's first concern is for protection of environmental values of forests including clean water and wildlife.

The second benefit is that studies of values and related concepts can help managers predict how people will react to particular forest practices (Bengston, 1994). To be most helpful in predicting responses, these studies need to also measure attitudes that have a specific object, for example a particular practice. Cognitive hierarchy theories such as Stern (2000) Value, Belief, Norm theory can relate attitudes to objects to the more generally but more deeply held values and beliefs that underlie them. Research based on such theories can help managers identify practices that are preferred by the public and that also reflect deeper social values for forests.

Thirdly, analysis of values can help in understanding and managing value conflicts (Bengston, 1994). Forest management has been described as a Wicked Problem (Shindler and Cramer, 1999), that is a series of complex, interrelated problems based in conflicting values rather than a single objective to be optimized by management, like visual aesthetics. Endter-Wada et al. (1998) argue that social components of forest management, such as values, have tended to be dealt with in an ad hoc way, in the political arena, after the biophysical or ‘scientific’ data are collected. Decision-makers would be in a better position to provide more complete advice to policy-makers about these conflicts if they have data on human values.

The forest practice of interest in this research is a clearfell, burn and sow system currently used to harvest and regenerate wet eucalypt forests in the Australian state of Tasmania. This system is viewed by members of the large-scale timber industry as being safe and effective, but there is considerable concern about the practice within the wider community. The aim of the research was to better understand these public concerns by exploring the value basis for social acceptability judgements. The research was part of a larger project (Ford et al., 2005) which investigated the social acceptability of alternative harvest systems in Tasmanian wet eucalypt forests.

Attitudes and values are words with everyday meanings, but as concepts in social science, their definitions are debated. Campbell (1963, cited in Rokeach, 1972) referred to this as a ‘terminological forest’. Some theoretical understanding of these and other concepts is necessary before they can be applied in research and management.

Section snippets

Concepts used to understand public responses to forestry

The theoretical bases of concepts used in understanding public responses to forestry have been explored through a debate about the nature of aesthetics (Daniel, 2001b, Gobster, 1999, Parsons and Daniel, 2002).

Underlying research into landscape aesthetics, such as the Scenic Beauty Estimation (SBE) method (Daniel and Boster, 1976), is a theoretical stance that views emotions as playing a major role in human responses to visual stimuli (Zajonc, 1980). Preferences for particular types of

Research design

The research design involved two phases. In the first, primarily qualitative methods were used to refine a cognitive hierarchy model as a hypothesis for testing in the second phase.

The second phase began with development of a simulated image to represent the clearfell system and a questionnaire to measure concepts on the cognitive hierarchy. Quantitative data were then collected from a larger number of participants, using a cross-sectional design. These data were reduced using factor analysis.

Method

In 2002, 18 people took part in field trips that included group interviews. One trip was held for each of four affiliation groups: people associated with the large-scale forest industry (three people); members of conservation organisations (five people); users of specialty species timbers such as woodworkers (five people); and people with no affiliation in relation to forest harvesting (five people). Participants were recruited through Hobart-based organisations selected with the aim of

Development of a questionnaire

Instruments were needed to measure concepts at each step of the cognitive hierarchy. The NAVS provided a relevant instrument for measuring value orientations (Winter and Lockwood, 2004).

A set of 10 statements as indicators of valued objects and a set of 20 statements as indicators of beliefs about consequences were drawn from the phase 1 analysis (Table 3, Table 4). This was done systematically after using the NVIVO software to organize the data according to broad beliefs about consequences.

Discussion and conclusions

Overall, the structural equation model provided some support for the cognitive conceptual framework (Fig. 1) adapted from Stern (2000) and Ajzen and Fishbein (1980). This finding is consistent with previous research that has found cognitive hierarchy models useful for predicting environmental attitudes, behaviour or behavioural intent (Pouta and Rekola, 2001, Steg et al., 2005, Stern et al., 1995, Vaske and Donnelly, 1999, Winter, 2002).

Caution is required in interpreting the results as the

Acknowledgements

The research described in this paper was funded by the Australian Research Council with industry contributions from Forestry Tasmania and the Bureau of Rural Sciences. It was approved by the University of Melbourne Human Research Ethics Committee, Arts and Humanities sub-committee. Thanks to the many people who contributed to this project, particularly John Hickey, Daniel Loiterton, Anna Flanagan and Paul Dudgeon. The authors acknowledge two anonymous examiners for their helpful comments on the

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    Present address: Food Standards Australia and New Zealand, PO Box 7186, Canberra, BC ACT 2610, Australia.

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