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Typologizing Stakeholder Information Use to Better Understand the Impacts of Collaborative Climate Science

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Abstract

There is increasing interest among scholars in producing information that is useful and usable to land and natural resource managers in a changing climate. This interest has prompted transitions from scientist- to stakeholder-driven or collaborative approaches to climate science. A common indicator of successful collaboration is whether stakeholders use the information resulting from the projects in which they are engaged. However, detailed examples of how stakeholders use climate information are relatively scarce in the literature, leading to a challenge in understanding what researchers can and should expect and plan for in terms of stakeholder use of research findings. Drawing on theoretical, typological, and evaluation insights from the field of information use, we examine stakeholder use of climate information emerging from 13 collaborative climate science projects conducted in the western United States between 2012 and 2016. Three primary types of use emerge from our findings—conceptual, instrumental, and justification—reflecting common typologization of information use. Conceptual use was the most predominant. We suggest that researcher awareness of this typology can enable more systematic understanding of what project outputs stakeholders use and impacts of those outputs, giving way to new areas of inquiry and aiding in the conceptualization and design of climate information products for land and natural resource managers.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Geological Survey under Grants G13AC00326, G15AP00175, and G17AP00100 from the Department of the Interior Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, Northwest Climate Adaptation Science Center, or the US Geological Survey. This manuscript is submitted for publication with the understanding that the United States Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes. We wish to thank Alexandra Lutz of the Desert Research Institute for her valuable review of this paper, as well as the editors and three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful feedback and comments.

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  1. Division of Atmospheric Sciences, Desert Research Institute, 2215 Raggio Parkway, Reno, NV, 89512, USA

    Kristin VanderMolen & Tamara U. Wall

  2. Institute of the Environment, University of Arizona, 1064 E. Lowell Street, Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Alison M. Meadow & Alexandra Horangic

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  1. Kristin VanderMolen
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Correspondence to Kristin VanderMolen.

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VanderMolen, K., Meadow, A.M., Horangic, A. et al. Typologizing Stakeholder Information Use to Better Understand the Impacts of Collaborative Climate Science. Environmental Management 65, 178–189 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-019-01237-9

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