What is a river basin? Assessing and understanding the sociocultural mental constructs of landscapes from different stakeholders across a river basin

Abstract

In the Mediterranean basin, climate models predict future scenarios characterized by more frequently uncertain hydrological services. European policies increasingly promote new models of water management based on river basins as socioecological systems and participatory strategies to ensure better inclusiveness and representativeness of all local actors. Practice has demonstrated the value of stakeholder engagement for achieving more productive and beneficial outcomes of decision-making in landscape management and conservation policies. However, sometimes participatory processes do not lead to effective results. One reason could be related to different understandings of concepts. There is, in fact, still limited research assessing whether the concepts or technical terms used in those processes are understood in the same way by the participants. Therefore, our study aims to explore the mental constructs of stakeholders through a combination of semi-structured interviews and hand-made drawings, using the concept of the river basin as a study concept. We found differences in the relationships between stakeholders’ ways of drawing and describing the river basin starting from its mental constructs. The results also showed that the way stakeholders construct ideas and views related to the landscape influenced some factors that stakeholders used to express them, such as the drawing shape, drawing length, emotions and associated values used in the descriptions. Likewise, mental constructs were influenced by stakeholders’ profiles and their working position. This study highlights that a better understanding of stakeholders' perceptions and their understandings could be essential if we are to achieve more effective and inclusive participatory processes in complex and dynamic socioecological contexts