UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Approaches Used to Evaluate the Social Impacts of Protected Areas

De Lange, E; Woodhouse, E; Milner-Gulland, EJ; (2016) Approaches Used to Evaluate the Social Impacts of Protected Areas. Conservation Letters , 9 (5) pp. 327-333. 10.1111/conl.12223. Green open access

[thumbnail of Woodhouse_Lange_et_al-2016-Conservation_Letters.pdf]
Preview
Text
Woodhouse_Lange_et_al-2016-Conservation_Letters.pdf

Download (168kB) | Preview

Abstract

Protected areas are a key strategy in conserving biodiversity, and there is a pressing need to evaluate their social impacts. Though the social impacts of development interventions are widely assessed, the conservation literature is limited and methodological guidance is lacking. Using a systematic literature search, which found 95 relevant studies, we assessed the methods used to evaluate the social impacts of protected areas. Mixed methods were used by more than half of the studies. Almost all studies reported material aspects of wellbeing, particularly income; other aspects were included in around half of studies. The majority of studies provided a snapshot, with only one employing a before-after-control-intervention design. Half of studies reported respondent perceptions of impacts, while impact was attributed from researcher inference in 1/3 of cases. Although the number of such studies is increasing rapidly, there has been little change in the approaches used over the last 15 years, or in the authorship of studies, which is predominantly academics. Recent improvements in understanding of best practice in social impact evaluation need to be translated into practice if a true picture of the effects of conservation on local people is to be obtained.

Type: Article
Title: Approaches Used to Evaluate the Social Impacts of Protected Areas
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1111/conl.12223
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/conl.12223
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Anthropology
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1492680
Downloads since deposit
121Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item