Integrating cultural perspectives in pro-sustainable-forest-management behavior: Evidence from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups in Ontario, Canada

Zhang Yiwen, Shashi Kant and Ilan Vertinsky

Forest Policy and Economics, 2025, vol. 175, issue C

Abstract: Incorporating stakeholders' forest values, a key to Sustainable Forest Management (SFM), requires an understanding of stakeholders' beliefs and values and their relationships to pro-SFM behavior. In a cross-cultural context, it is essential to understand cultural differences in these attributes and relationships, and use culture-sensitive data elicitation and interpretation methods. We proposed a pro-SFM behavior model, that integrates the key elements of selected models pro-environmental behavior proposed in the environmental psychology and resource economics literature, to examine the role of assigned forest values (AFVs) and beliefs in pro-SFM behavior. We tested the model in the context of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal forest stakeholders in Ontario, Canada, using the data collected through surveys and field experiments in three Aboriginal and three non-Aboriginal communities. Our key findings are: (i) the rankings of different domains of AFVs are different among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups; (ii) for Aboriginal people, their AFVs assigned from the community perspective have significantly higher mean scores than their AFVs assigned from their individual/household's perspective; (iii) the community AFVs and the individual/household AFVs were the better predictors of pro-SFM behaviors for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups, respectively; and (iv) AFVs have significant mediation effects between environmental worldviews and pro-SFM behavior for non-Aboriginal people, while environmental worldviews directly influence pro-SFM behavior of Aboriginal people with no mediation through AFVs. The paper concludes with the implications of these results to SFM theories and practices and calls for incorporating cultural differences in designing SFM policies and practices.

Keywords: Forest values; Assigned values; Environmental beliefs; Cultural variations; Aboriginal people; Mediation effect; Pro-environmental behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934125000760
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:175:y:2025:i:c:s1389934125000760

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2025.103497

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().