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Changing Public Behavior > Audiences > Landowners

72 Total Findings

Acknowledge landowner interest and concern for the quality of their land.

Apply group decision analysis (including needs and opportunities of stakeholders) in the long-term watershed planning process. Steps include: develop an understanding of watershed issues, problems, constraints and capabilities; consult about management strategies and alternatives; and prioritize strategies and alternatives.

As watershed organizations develop, facilitate a form of governance that is democratic and able to generate outcomes considered legitimate by all affected parties:

Base the outreach or education process on mutual understanding, trust, and respect that leads landowners to choose to comply because they see it in their best interest.

Base your program design on specifically identified needs.

Be aware of the boundary between education and advocacy.

Be aware of the larger political issues and contexts in which water quality outreach and education take place (such as legislative requirements). Identify and communicate potential areas for measurable change.

Capable institutions are an essential element of effective integrated water resource management.  An institutional assessment process investigating policy, organizational and operational elements, are effective tools when designed and analyzed by stakeholders.  Assessment criteria include:

Capture the social dynamics of grounds maintenance operations units including social, physical, and environmental responses to watershed management concerns to reveal key decision-making points in the system. Develop a framework of these dynamics, to illustrate activities needed to implement sustainable watershed and environmental management at large institutions.

Create opportunities to build landowner participation in the activities of landowner groups.

Educate stakeholders to help them fully understand planning tools available to protect open space, the benefits of planning, and planning and collaborative techniques.

Emphasize an "integrated" program that provides a continuum of information, communication, and education resources

Emphasize effective leadership when encouraging or facilitating watershed group formation. Watershed groups rate leadership as more important to effective group formation than support factors such as staff assistance or financial support.

Emphasize local elements of control.

Engage audience in planning.

Engage golf course conservation superintendents in developing a course on turf grass management

Explicitly recognize the implications of organizational affiliation when designing policies that foster collaboration in watersheds. Organizational culture and preexisting constituent relationships may dictate definitions of the problem and the range of preferred alternatives in agency-affiliated partnerships.

For rangeland owners and managers, evaluation surveys of training outcomes are an alternative to formal reporting about implementation of nonpoint source water programs that protects confidentiality while documenting program success.

Give the audience an opportunity to provide input into the process to better assure that they will allow local leaders to make decisions for them.

How a watershed group is formed may influence its effectiveness.

Identify characteristics of landowners that could influence interest in conservation practices.

In developing conservation programs, planners should not assume homogeneity of landowners. Uniform solutions might not apply. Motivation variables differ according to the specific conservation practice. In Oregon, those who adopted conservation practices in watersheds were characterized by several variables:

In landowner or renter situations:

In the long-term watershed planning process, assess and analyse different stakeholders’ preferences in order to prioritize various strategies and alternatives. For example, use an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) or a social choice function (SCF) process. The analytical hierarchy process is best used with expert groups and includes (1) the structuring of a problem into a hierarchy consisting of a goal and subordinate features, (2) pairwise comparisons between elements at each level, and (3) propagation of level-specific, local priorities to global priorities. The intensity of preference between any two elements is assessed by integers ranging from 1 to 9 (Saaty, 1980, 1990).  The social choice function is based on pairwise comparisons on the number of voters between pairs of strategies. It assumes that all assertions of preference between two strategies carry equal weight.

Include information that shows how the message affects landowners personally and what specific actions landowners can take to improve the situation.

Industry initiated voluntary pollution control programs, supported by education, can result in implementation of BMPs when course work involves participants developing a water quality management plan for their ranch that includes
ranch description, ranch goals, ranch maps, basin water quality status, nonpoint source self-assessments, existing and planned BMPs, and monitoring procedures.

Keep the message simple.

Keep the purpose of an event or message similar to the local situation (e.g., documents and videotapes are most effective when clearly tailored to the local landscape).

Link conservation, stewardship, and watershed topics to a particular place on the owner's land.

Make time for continuous evaluation in order to best determine next steps (Ransley, 2003).

Make time for continuous evaluation in order to best determine next steps (Voege, 1998).

Make turf grass management courses readily accessible to golf course managers and provide instructor support for completing assignments and application to their own golf course

Match the information technology delivery mechanism to the computer work style of the landowner. How does the landowner already use the computer?

Participating as part of community and watershed groups is more likely to lead to learning new information and making management changes.

Pennsylvania-specific recommendations for how municipal environmental advisory councils can be effective.

Plan for the time it takes to adopt new ideas.

Provide agriculture landowners with written materials in addition to whatever other communication methods are selected.

Provide clear information about goals and plans for land parcels. Provide regular feedback about how well goals and plans have been achieved.

Provide groups with training to help develop leadership and organization skills.

Provide landowners with hands-on, practical training about individual property management choices. Describe choices in the context of information about broader ecosystem science and impacts.

Provide landowners with information in a handbook format and in a calendar, making good use of photographs

Provide training for real estate professionals in a supportive atmosphere accompanied by a field trip

Rely on a targeted approach when developing an outreach strategy.

Social learning refers to the growing capacity of a social network to develop and perform collective actions. In promoting social learning in watershed management, it is important to frame information in such a way that a convergence of views becomes possible through interaction and collective learning processes, e.g. maps illustrating the impacts of water releases, as perceived by the users; graphs showing flow/time relationship and details of the hydrological regime; and field trips and video sessions to allow participants to see the impact of water releases on fish reproduction. Other useful tools include, for example, tools to communicate a vision about water management such as might be accomplished with a 3D model of a hydro-electric dam, a3D chart localizing all the dams on the river, video cassettes and measuring instruments, which testify that the water management authority cares about people’s safety, and stakeholder involvement in data gathering.

Social learning refers to the growing capacity of a social network to develop and perform collective actions. In promoting social learning in watershed management, use technical information in a way that supports local actors to explore and clarify their own understanding of the river basin. Beware of information or communication tools that are either poorly designed or used inadequately, for example with too much technical content. Those can act as a barrier by overwhelming actors with technical information which is not relevant or understandable for them.

Tailor messages to provide the audience with information that affects them personally.

Tap into indigenous knowledge of local land stewards, especially since recommended, best-bet practices may have uncertain results in local application.

Teach water science and build environmentally responsible behavior among students through “service-learning” experiences that apply principles of interaction and continuity: both of which are significant features of education that lead to learning.

Tell the audience what actions they can take to improve the situation.

The process of learning about the community of learners is as important as the content of the learning.

To assure that watershed groups can play a valuable substantive role in states’ watershed management programs, encourage active recruiting to include a variety of perspectives. As collaborative policies are developed, sponsors must strike a balance to achieve an appropriate balance of participants to address each concern.

To assure that watershed groups can play a valuable substantive role in states’ watershed management programs, encourage and maintain heterogeneous participation in watershed partnerships as they work through assessment, planning or day-to-day operations of the partnership, wrestle with internal differences, and establish new collective goals and strategies to achieve them.

To effectively engage watershed partners and major stakeholders to investigate: landowner issues, awareness of environmental management problems, business development intentions, and potential impact of incentives.

To enhance local conservation planning, facilitate development of an organized public interest group who can speak on behalf of conservation initiatives.

To enhance participation in water resource and watershed management, assess small landholder water related needs to orientate the public participation process.

To enhance participation in water resource and watershed management, create small-scale user forums to improve the internal organization among small landholders and give them a voice.

To enhance participatory decision-making, build commitment to research by engaging watershed partners and major stakeholders in answering questions such as: a) what information is needed?; b) how is the information to be collected and analyzed?; c) Who has access to the data and on what conditions?; d) How will the data be used to improve watershed management outcomes?

To help landowners learn new information, about riparian areas, landowners prefer that staff characteristics include knowledge about riparian management and understanding of the practicalities of living and working near riparian areas.

Trusted individuals can deliver messages effectively

Understand "opportunity costs" and social norms relative to the content or practice focus of the outreach.

Use a variety of outreach methods, with each targeted at specific, desired behaviors.

Use audience assessment strategies to identify which, if any, water and watershed governance strategies interest households and landowners. Build participatory opportunities around specific topics of interest. Consider household and landowner response to strategies such as: pollution control, lowering prices, protecting flood plains, improving storage facilities, improving repairs and maintenance and introducing enforced metering.

Use key informant interviews of local leaders to aid understanding for how to engage leaders in planning for conservation of open space.  Consider attitudes, issues, and obstacles.

Watershed management participatory methods include, scenario workshops (develops ideas and actions based on visioning processes), mediated modeling (problem definition, conceptualization, specification, and policy analysis), and social multicriteria evaluation (compliments decision-making processes with social science techniques including institutional analysis, interviews,questionnaires, obeservation, polls, and focus groups). Scenario workshops and mediated modeling are well-suited to the early stages of the planning process (problem solving and identification of goals and alternatives) and good at educating participants and building capacity, but not as effective at resolving long-standing conflicts and achieving consensus.  Social multicriteria evaluation is better able to address the evaluation of alternatives, reveal trade-offs, and aid convergence between divergent stakeholder's views; however, implementation is heavily reliant on experts, and allows for less participation and deliberation than scenario workshops or mediated modeling  in the goal-setting stage.  A hybrid of participatory methods may be the best approach.

When applying group decision analysis processes in the long-term watershed planning process, facilitate development of/effective operation of a watershed council in order to enhance coordination among the stakeholders when choosing long-term watershed management alternatives.

When encouraging or facilitating the activities of a watershed group, consider group purpose and needs.  Distinguish whether the group wants to focus on educational and social benefits, the ability to influence policy, or create on-the-ground improvements.

When facilitating sustainable watershed and environmental management at large institutions emphasize:

When implementing group decision analysis results in the long-term watershed planning process, facilitate development of awareness and cooperation of all stakeholders, especially governmental agencies and local communities.

When working on riparian issues, allow the local community to drive the process, identify the timelines, and identify the way in which they wish to manage riparian areas. Use awareness, team and tool building, community-based action, and monitoring.

When working on riparian issues, employ multiple interactions and a mix of many extension methods to offer opportunities for diverse information and ideas and methods of providing them, and to meet individualized learning needs. Methods may include presentations, field days, workshops, individual landowner visits, riparian health inventories and reports, written materials, technical advice, and web site information on riparian areas and grazing management.

When working on riparian issues, give the community the opportunity to build a relationship with extension staff, to build trust and understanding, and to allow enough time for multiple interactions to occur.

Work in collaboration with the professional association to publicize a course for golf course managers


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