Understanding collaborative natural resource management programs and institutions

The management of natural resources has undergone a fundamental change over the past decade. The traditional management approach that relies on command and control institutions, and punitive measures to enforce existing statues is now being used in conjunction with compliance based strategies. Compliance based programs rely on positive incentives and the community collaborative decision making model to govern natural resources. The most widely used compliance based strategy is collaborative management. The three most common types of collaborative management are ecosystem management, watershed initiatives and forestry partnerships. This dissertation examines why state legislatures adopt collaborative management programs, and analyzes the factors effecting the stakeholder's evaluation of collaborative institutions. The theories of subsystem politics and transaction cost economics are used to answer these questions.; The following transaction costs influence the likelihood that a state will adopt a collaborative management program: commitment costs, agency costs, and decision making costs. These costs effect adoption by affecting the exchange that occurs among legislators and their constituents, which in turn impacts the costs associated with this exchange. Additionally, the natural resource management subsystems in some states are more likely to change than the subsystems in other states. Factors such as the mean educational attainment, per capita income, and the political control of government institutions effect if a state's resource management subsystems are prone to change.; The evaluation of collaborative institutions is impacted by institutional rules, individual traits and institutional characteristics. The evaluation of a collaborative institution can be done by examining how actors evaluate the decision making process used by their group. Individuals evaluate the decision making process more favorably if their group has an institutional rule limiting discussion. Stakeholders with prior management experience rate the process unfavorably because collaborative institutions weaken their influence over existing deterrence based institutions. If people believe their participation in a collaborative group will benefit them over time, they rate the decision making process more favorably.