Methods in ecosystem services governance analysis: An introduction

This paper introduces the special issue on ‘Methods for ecosystem services governance analysis’. The term ‘ecosystem service governance’ has only recently emerged in the peer-reviewed literature in ecosystem services research. This introductory paper aims to analyze and review the body of literature that has been published under the label ‘ecosystem service governance’ so far in regard to three questions: what kind of studies currently exist, how are these studies framed in terms of the underlying understanding of governance and the specific terminology used, and which methods are currently applied to increase our understanding of ecosystem services governance and its associated specific challenges? Altogether 67 literature references were analyzed, identified through a systematic approach for literature screening and review. Our results show that studies in this field are highly diverse, focusing on different governance types, including mostly hybrid, market- and community-based approaches and, to a lesser extent, also hierarchical approaches. In terms of studied governance challenges, prior interest was given to the institutional diversity of existing solutions and the fact that often very heterogeneous actors with diverging interests are involved. The studies were framed according to the specific focus of the conducted research, drawing from very different governance notions, either more interested in the involved actors, governed ecosystems and their services, scale issues, specifics of governance implementation or the targeted outcomes. In view of the employed methods, mostly qualitative and mixed methods and relatively less quantitative approaches were used. Gaps could be identified for participatory and dynamic methodological approaches, which consider several points in time. Against this backdrop, the special issue presents a set of methods that seem particularly promising in view of analyzing ecosystem services governance. The single paper contributions introduce the different methods in detail and also pinpoint their respective merits and limitations. Presented methods include qualitative comparative analysis, stated preference analysis, contingent valuation, economic experiments, participatory social network analysis, simulation and role playing games, as well as ecosystem services modeling.