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Using Canonical Correlation Analysis to Identify Environmental Attitude Groups: Considerations for National Forest Planning in the Southwestern U.S.

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Abstract

As public land management agencies pursue region-specific resource management plans, with meaningful consideration of public attitudes and values, there is a need to characterize the complex mix of environmental attitudes in a diverse population. The contribution of this investigation is to make use of a unique household, mail/internet survey data set collected in 2007 in the Southwestern United States (Region 3 of the U.S. Forest Service). With over 5,800 survey responses to a set of 25 Public Land Value statements, canonical correlation analysis is able to identify 7 statistically distinct environmental attitudinal groups. We also examine the effect of expected changes in regional demographics on overall environmental attitudes, which may help guide in the development of socially acceptable long-term forest management policies. Results show significant support for conservationist management policies and passive environmental values, as well as a greater role for stakeholder groups in generating consensus for current and future forest management policies.

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Notes

  1. The National Forest Management Act (NFMA) of 1976 requires public input in the development and revision of management plans. Plans are reviewed when conditions change, or at least every 15 years, at the Forest, Regional, and National levels.

  2. See McCollum et al. (2008) for a full description of the sampling design and procedures, as well as basic descriptive statistics of the sample.

  3. We tested the sensitivity of the imputation method by replacing the missing Public Land Values with the median, using regression-based predictive values, and by omitting observations with a missing Public Land Value. This test revealed that canonical correlation analysis results are sensitive to the method used to replace missing values, and that the method used in our analysis more closely resembles the sample that omits all missing values.

  4. While only summarized here, full exploratory factor analysis results are available upon request from the lead author. The four statements excluded from the analysis are: 5 ‘The whole pollution issue has never upset me too much since I feel it’s somewhat overrated’; 9 ‘I would be willing to pay five dollars more each time I use public lands for recreational purposes’; 17 ‘Donating time or money to worthy causes is important to me’; and, 22 ‘I think public land managers are doing an adequate job of protecting natural resources from being overused.’

  5. The canonical correlation is not equivalent to the coefficient of correlation, i.e., a measure of variance. The variance can be found by estimating a redundancy index.

  6. The 21 public land values statements represent the larger set of variables, compared to the 14 demographic characteristics; therefore, the total number of possible relationships is 14.

  7. The canonical loadings for the corresponding Public Land Value statements are available upon request to the lead author.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Carolyn Sieg, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Flagstaff, AZ, for research support. Funding was provided under Joint Venture Agreements (06-JV-199 and 05-JV-257) between the Department of Economics, University of New Mexico, and the Rocky Mountain Research Station (Flagstaff, AZ, and Fort Collins, CO, respectively), U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. We would also like to thank an anonymous reviewer and the editor for suggesting additional sensitivity tests on the imputation method and results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    Alejandro J. Prera

  2. Statistics Norway, Oslo, Norway

    Kristine M. Grimsrud

  3. Department of Economics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Jennifer A. Thacher & Robert P. Berrens

  4. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS), Ft. Collins, CO, USA

    Dan W. McCollum

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  1. Alejandro J. Prera
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  2. Kristine M. Grimsrud
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  3. Jennifer A. Thacher
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  4. Dan W. McCollum
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  5. Robert P. Berrens
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Correspondence to Alejandro J. Prera.

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Prera, A.J., Grimsrud, K.M., Thacher, J.A. et al. Using Canonical Correlation Analysis to Identify Environmental Attitude Groups: Considerations for National Forest Planning in the Southwestern U.S.. Environmental Management 54, 756–767 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-014-0349-0

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