About
47
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614
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Introduction
My research interests are framed within the context of the human dimensions of natural resource management. My focus has been outdoor recreation both inside and outside of parks and protected areas:
1. Structural social psychological characteristics outdoor recreation participation.
2. The role of recreation specialization in references for natural resource management.
3. Public participation in natural resource decision-making.
4. Social criteria and indicators of sustainable forest management.
Additional affiliations
January 2006 - July 2013
Education
September 2000 - January 2006
Publications
Publications (47)
In cities throughout North America, sightings of coyotes ( Canis latrans ) have become common. Reports of human-coyote conflict are also rising, as is the public demand for proactive management to prevent negative human-coyote interactions. Effective and proactive management can be informed by the direct observations of community members, who can r...
Contributory citizen science projects (hereafter “contributory projects”) are a powerful tool for avian conservation science. Large-scale projects such as eBird have produced data that have advanced science and contributed to many conservation applications. These projects also provide a means to engage the public in scientific data collection. A co...
Although birdwatchers comprise a large and growing proportion of the American public, there is a lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the birdwatching community. Previous research suggests that this homogeneity is self-perpetuating, as Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color (BIPOC) are less likely to pursue activities in which no one they know...
Recreation specialization is a framework that can be used to explain the variation among outdoor recreationists’ preferences, attitudes, and behaviors. Recreation specialization has been operationalized using several approaches, including summative indices, cluster analysis, and self-classification categorical measures. Although these approaches me...
Definitions of leisure and emotional experiences during leisure vary across cultures, but have been understudied. To elucidate the relationships between leisure, emotion, and culture, we adopted a cultural psychology method called situation sampling. Using an onsite survey, we collected leisure and non-leisure situations from 126 Euro-Canadian and...
Temporal and spatial constraints are prevalent, structural barriers to daily leisure participation. This study explored different forms of temporal and spatial constraints that urban residents experience in China when they participate in daily leisure activities. A one-week time diary survey was conducted, coupled with GPS tracking. Data consisted...
A growing body of scholars in natural resources management have called for the examination of the roles of social capital and social networks in the effective maintenance of community-based projects. Yet, the role of social capital in collective action cannot be effectively understood without studying agency. The goal of this study is to examine ho...
Outdoor recreation facilitates important connections to nature and wildlife, but it is perceived differently across population segments. As such, we expected that socio-demographic characteristics of individuals would influence intention to participate in outdoor recreation. We solicited 5,000 U.S. residents (n = 1,030, 23% response rate) to descri...
We examined meanings of leisure and a Chinese leisure-like term (i.e., xiū xián) from laypeople’s perspectives by modifying Ito and Walker’s (2014 Ito, E., & Walker, G. J. (2014). Similarities and differences in leisure conceptualizations between Japan and Canada and between two Japanese leisure-like terms. Leisure/Loisir, 38(1), 1–19.[Taylor & Fra...
Researchers have cautioned against both erasing conceptual complexities and homogenizing communities in community-based natural resources (CBNRM) studies and interventions. Social capital is seen as an enabler of CBNRM, yet we argue that differential access to social capital and associated outcomes deserves greater attention to avoid oversimplifica...
Due to the growth of nature-based tourism during in recent decades, the value of forested areas for the tourism industry has been increasing. This is largely due to the aesthetic values that are often associated with forests. However, forests are also highly valued for timber production, an activity that can seriously compromise the visual quality...
Hunting tourism plays important roles in the conservation of wildlife; hunters provide financial support for conservation programs and habitat protection, assist in the monitoring of wildlife populations, and play important roles in population management (Heffelfinger et al. in Int J Environ Stud 70(3):399–413, 2013). These conservation roles indir...
British Columbia forests have traditionally been managed for timber production. However, the increasing importance of nature-based tourism within the province means that forests also have significant value as a tourism resource. This can lead to conflicts between the forestry and tourism industries. This article examines tourism and forestry intere...
Increases in the environmental awareness of global consumers coupled with pressure from regional stakeholders has forced forest managers to demonstrate the potential implications of forest management activities for a broad range of indicators. This paper describes the construction and application of a hierarchical decision-support system for evalua...
Wildfire management in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) protects property and life from wildland fire. One approach that has potential to provide information about the amount and location of fuels to forest managers and, at the same time, increase public knowledge and engagement in reducing wildfire threats is public participation in scientific r...
Sustainable forest management (SFM) requires the balancing of diverse values and conflicting management
objectives. Climate change adds a further degree of uncertainty to this complex issue. In this
study we analysed a Strategic Forest Management Plan (SFMP) from the southwest Yukon, Canada. The
SFMP was developed to enable the salvage harvesting o...
The field of wildlife management has been on a collision course with human nature for some time, documented by the growing and important body of human dimensions of wildlife research. As the evolution of this field continues, a new dimension of “humane” considerations in wildlife management should be investigated. An exploratory online study of opi...
Conceptions and challenges of public participation in British Columbia are reviewed to identify those characteristics of planning processes that serve to benefit or constrain the interests and needs of public stakeholders. Perspectives on public participation, including representative and participatory democracies, and approaches to incorporating p...
This study draws upon the results of a survey of the general public in three communities in British Columbia to examine the social bases of satisfaction with public participation in forest management decision-making at both the local and provincial levels. The main findings are that those members of the general public who are relatively more biocen...
Public preferences are likely to play an important role in prioritizing species at risk for conservation. We conducted a survey of British Columbians (Canada) (n =555, r =73%) to examine how the public ranks a species' attributes (rather than named species) with respect to conservation priority. Endemism, defined as species only or mainly occurring...
Although public participation is a requirement of sustainable forest management (SFM), it can be difficult for forest managers to obtain broad levels of representation through traditional public participation mechanisms, such as open houses, information sessions, and public advisory groups (PAGs). Some of the difficulties stem from barriers to part...
It is critical to understand how the public prioritizes multiple forestry values when establishing objectives for sustainable forest management. While this is a complex and difficult task, a necessary step is to elicit a broad range of public opinions in forest planning to ensure that decisions serve the needs of various forest stakeholders and soc...
Understanding recreation behaviour can help forest managers identify public uses of forests and gauge the extent of recreation use. This paper documents recreation behaviour in nine forest-dependent communities in British Columbia and examines three questions: (1) is outdoor recreation relevant to local residents?; (2) what are the characteristics...
This review synthesizes some of the main themes of social sustainability indicators for forest management, and addresses conceptual categories, issues, and limitations associated with the use of social indicators. Socio-cultural values and conditions associated with quality of life, public access to non-market benefits and resources, governance, an...
For many people, outdoor recreation provides one of the main opportunities to experience, interact with, and learn about forested landscapes. Yet public recreation use of forests in Canada is not yet well understood; knowing more about this important forest stakeholder group would help to address aspects of social sustainability in forest managemen...
The case of recreation in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor in British Columbia (BC) is used to explore the issue of the representation of outdoor recreation in forest landscape management. The widening array of outdoor recreation activities in high-use areas poses new challenges to the equitable participation of diverse recreation user groups in forest land...
This extension note is the third in a series of eight that describes a set of tools and processes developed to support sustainable forest management planning and its pilot application in the Arrow Timber Supply Area (TSA). It summarizes the main public involvement processes used to obtain input to the Arrow Innovative Forest Practices Agreement (IF...
This extension note is the eighth in a series of eight that describes a set of tools and processes developed to support sustainable forest management planning and its pilot application in the Arrow Timber Supply Area (TSA). It summarizes the criterion and indicators used to evaluate quality-of-life opportunities for the sustainable forest managemen...
This extension note is the eighth in a series of eight that describes a set of tools and processes developed to support sustainable forest management planning and its pilot application in the Arrow Timber Supply Area (TSA). It summarizes the criterion and indicators used to evaluate quality-of-life opportunities for the sustainable forest managemen...
A social network approach is employed to examine the role that social capital plays in the relationships people have with forested landscapes and to identify the implications of these relationships to forest land-use planning. We argue that network-based processes lead to the development of social identity and to the formation of forest values. By...
Forest management decisions are often based on long-range projections of future forest conditions. These conditions and effects can be complex and difficult to understand for those not trained or experienced in forest management. Modern computer-based environmental data visualization systems have been found to be of considerable assistance in this...
The visual landscape of forests is an important source of information for the public in judging the sustainability of forest resource management, and there is an increasing recognition of the importance of the linkage between forest ecology and aesthetics among foresters and environmental scientists. Forest resource managers pursuing the goals of e...
The visual landscape of forests is an important source of information for the public in judging the sustainability of forest resource management, and there is an increasing recognition of the importance of the linkage between forest ecology and aesthetics among foresters and environmental scientists. Forest resource managers pursuing the goals of e...
The visual landscape of forests is an important source of information for the public in judging the sustainability of forest resource management, and there is an increasing recognition of the importance of the linkage between forest ecology and aesthetics among foresters and environmental scientists. Forest resource managers pursuing the goals of e...
A better understanding of the relationships between outdoor recreation and resource uses immediately outside parks may help to mitigate management concerns about increased outdoor recreation use inside parks. An example from a pilot study demonstrates how Recreation Impact Analysis (RIA) assessed the spatial and temporal impacts of timber harvestin...
Projects
Projects (4)
Reconciling natural resource conservation with rural community empowerment is a much-needed goal and a global challenge. Social capital is recognized for its potential role in enabling collective action in natural resources management benefitting both individuals and communities. Yet caution against erasing conceptual complexities and homogenizing communities has been emphasized to avoid simplistic CBNRM interventions. With my research I aim to critically investigate social capital as it relates to empowerment and equity impacts to offer new insights for effective contextually-driven interventions. I take an interdisciplinary, multi-method and multi-level perspective to examine if and how social capital plays a role in community empowerment in ecotourism projects. I currently focus in cases in the Volta Region of Ghana.
Assess knowledge, preferences, use, and conservation support among birdwatchers and waterfowl hunters in the U.S. This information will inform waterfowl management across the national flyways.
