Social Network Analysis to Support Stakeholder Analysis in Participatory Forest Planning

摘要

In participatory forest planning, relevant stakeholders are included in the decision-making process. Stakeholder analysis is a crucial step in the participatory process in order to involve all groups of interests, increasing the legitimacy and transparency of the process. On the other hand, to gather an active stakeholder group that can communicate effectively, the number of key stakeholders should be restricted. This study aims to devise a nonsubjective method to identify and classify stakeholders in three categories (key, primary, and secondary stakeholders), taking into account the relationships among them (social network analysis). Stakeholders are classified according to the regular equivalence and betweenness centrality. The stakeholders' classification system is tested in two forest landscape management plans in Italy. Results show that the method is able to balance stakeholders' contributions and can be used to enhance the democratization of the decision-making process when power is unevenly distributed among the stakeholders.