Modeling stakeholder perceptions of collaborative initiative effectiveness

Collaborative planning and stewardship has emerged on the natural resource landscape as both an ideology and prescriptive tool to build agreement and manage conflict across diverse settings and resource issues. This article reports on a research study examining stakeholder perceptions of the performance of 30 collaborative initiatives from around the United States where the USDA Forest Service was identified as a partner in the initiative. Results from a mailed survey to active participants found the typical collaborative initiative to be fairly large and quite diverse with an average of 16.8 organizational members. Respondents generally felt initiatives were effective in achieving their purpose. in a regression analysis, leadership, willingness to compromise, and a broad representation of stakeholders emerged as significant predictors of outcome achievement. Findings from this study support recent evidence that collaborative initiatives are achieving important economic, quality of life, and bio/physical outcomes. However, due to the young age of many collaborative ventures, these outcomes are still in their formative stages.