| Natural resource management programs often document attitudes; they are seen as predictors of actual resource use behavior. I critique this assumption and test several predictions about how demography, knowledge and use-value of a resource correlate with attitudes and behavior in a village in western Uganda. Primarily farmers, these villagers rely on locally-extracted water and wood for daily subsistence. I ask: what are the costs and benefits of using the forest for resources, versus collecting in non-forest areas, and how are these costs and benefits reflected in people's attitudes, knowledge, self-reported use, and actual observed use of firewood and water? I conducted semi-structured interviews (n=201) and found that the majority of villagers perceived the forest as "very important" and expressed both need and worry for it. When I observed women, the primary household resource users (n=69), I found that they used the forest minimally. While there are demographic and socioeconomic correlations with expressed attitudes, there are very few correlations with actual behavior. I argue that, independent of each other, attitudes and behaviors are influenced by a third set of variables: historical governance patterns and institutions, and changes in these. Governance has vacillated between centralization and decentralization, and villagers have received conflicting and confusing information about what resources to use and how. People are allowed to enter the forest (Kasokwa Central Forest Reserve) to collect resources, but they are also encouraged, by multiple government and non-government information outlets, to grow and use their own trees for firewood. Today, villagers are fairly knowledgeable about how they should feel about the forest and its resources, but they are quite unsure about their actual ability to access and use the forest resources. Some even fear harassment from entering the forest. While I recognize the importance of attitudinal surveys as one method to measure perceived value and usage, and behavioral observations as one method to empirically measure resource consumption, we need to explore both historic and contemporary institutions as fundamental influences on the formation of attitudes and behavior. |
