Understanding Public Support for European Protected Areas: A Review of the Literature and Proposing a New Approach for Policy Makers

Nikoleta Jones, James McGinlay, Andreas Kontoleon, Victoria A. Maguire-Rajpaul, Panayiotis G. Dimitrakopoulos, Vassilis Gkoumas, Jan Åge Riseth, Kalev Sepp and Frank Vanclay
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Nikoleta Jones: Institute for Global Sustainable Development, School for Cross-Faculty Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
James McGinlay: Institute for Global Sustainable Development, School for Cross-Faculty Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Victoria A. Maguire-Rajpaul: Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 9EP, UK
Panayiotis G. Dimitrakopoulos: Department of Environment, University of the Aegean, 81100 Mytilene, Greece
Vassilis Gkoumas: Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 9EP, UK
Jan Åge Riseth: Department of Social Sciences, Norwegian Research Center (NORCE), Rombaksveien E6 47, N-8517 Narvik, Norway
Kalev Sepp: Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Estonian University of Life Sciences, Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwaldi 1a, 51014 Tartu, Estonia
Frank Vanclay: Department of Cultural Geography, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-15

Abstract: Protected Areas are the most widely applied policy tool for biodiversity conservation. In Europe, protected areas are expected to significantly increase as the new EU Biodiversity strategy sets an ambitious target of 30% of land and 30% of water to be protected by 2030. Despite the popularity of this environmental policy, understanding variations in the level of public support for protected areas remains underexplored. This is an important area of research, considering that, in order for protected areas to be effective, they need to be supported by most users, including local communities and visitors. In this paper, we reviewed theoretical and empirical evidence explaining the level of support for protected areas and proposed a new approach when designing and designating protected areas in Europe. This approach models the process of the introduction of a new protected area as a policy intervention within a socio-ecological system. Specifically, it models how protected area social outcomes or impacts are conditioned and contextualised by numerous intervening factors relating to the social context and governance and management system to influence local actors’ attitude and active support for the protected area. This new approach aims to assist policy makers, conservation practitioners and scientists to plan actions that assist in increasing the level of public support for protected areas in the context of the post 2020 Biodiversity Strategy of the European Union.

Keywords: protected area management; natural resource management; public participation; biodiversity conservation; EU biodiversity strategy; public acceptance; social acceptability; social effectiveness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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