Analysis of the participation of stakeholders in environmental management based on ANP: application to a Spanish natural park

Abstract

The influence of the participation of stakeholders in environmental planning is a real problem that has not been fully tackled in the existing literature. The influences exerted in the decision making process by different stakeholders, who want to satisfy their own interests, need to be analyzed in order to make a model of the problem that is closer to reality. The aim of this paper is to analyze these influences in a specific environmental problem, namely rice straw management in the Natural Park of La Albufera, Valencia (Spain), by means of the ANP methodology. The main question we explored was how to measure the influence among stakeholders. This a complex question because it is difficult for a stakeholder to answer the direct question, Who do you think exerts more influence on you when you have to solve a problem? In this work, we assumed that information exchange is the tool to measure the influence among the individuals in the network. These data are used to solve the ANP model. The final aim was to prove the utility of ANP to measure the influences among stakeholders in a Social Network.