Community benefits from managed resource areas an analysis of construct validity

The policies and management frameworks guiding the conservation of federally managed natural resource areas are intended to ensure the continued production of desired benefits to individuals who value them. This philosophy is often explicit in policy and management objectives. For example, in 2003 the Bureau of Land Management issued a "statement of commitment to the American public" that specified a "plan for delivering benefits to the American people and their communities" (p. 1). Other federal land managing agencies, such as the National Park Service and the USDA Forest Service, have similar objectives requiring the explicit consideration of desired benefits in decision making (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2010; U.S. Department of the Interior, 2011). By identifying and managing for desired benefits, resource managers ideally can build trust and satisfaction within local communities while simultaneously meeting other resource management needs such as species conservation or watershed protection (Anderson, Davenport, Leahy, & Stein, 2008). Unfortunately, however, identifying and managing benefits effectively is a difficult task for resource managers, often requiring trade-offs and difficult value-laden decisions (Wyman & Stein, 2010). To compound issues, natural resource social science scholarship has not sufficiently developed a standardized evaluation tool through which resource managers can systematically identify the benefits resource users and local community members desire. A more formalized method of assessing desired benefits is warranted. The purpose of this paper was to present and test a psychometric measurement instrument intended to gauge individuals' perceptions of the benefits communities desire located in close proximity to federally managed resource areas.Theoretical Origins of the Community Benefits Measurement InstrumentNatural resource social scientists have realized for some time that managed natural resource areas produce a host of benefits to individuals and local communities (Driver, 2008; Driver, Brown, & Peterson, 1991). The large majority of resource management scholarship, however, has focused almost exclusively on the benefits that individuals can obtain from managed resource areas. As a result, the presence of systematic research addressing the perceived benefits attained by local communities is highly underrepresented as both a social scientific line of inquiry and as a means of informing resource management decisions1 (Smith, Davenport, Anderson, & Leahy, 2011; Smith & Moore, 2011; Wyman & Stein, 2010).The focus on benefits produced solely through on-site resource use is attributable to the historical development and interdependence of federal resource management frameworks and resource management scholarship. The benefits-based management (BBM) framework, originally developed for leisure and recreation management, has heavily influenced the way academics and resource managers have conceptualized and identified desired benefits over the past 40 years (Driver, 2008). Under the BBM framework, a benefit is defined as a desired condition, an improved condition, or the prevention of an unwanted condition (Driver, 1996). Resource planners and managers first identify the benefits that resource users desire and subsequently take management actions that enable those benefits to be provided for.The underlying purpose of the BBM framework is to ensure that resource managers define how their actions will impact those individuals dependent upon the resource (Driver, 1996, 2008). Given this, the process of identifying and managing for benefits can easily be extended to investigate the benefits accrued not only to individuals but also to local communities (Smith et al., 2011; Smith & Moore, 2011; Wyman & Stein, 2010). Community benefits therefore can best be defined as "benefits resulting from public land management that accrue to local residents living in communities nearby or adjacent to public lands" (Anderson et al. …