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

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.