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Participatory approaches to science and decision making, including stakeholder engagement, are increasingly common for managing complex socio-ecological challenges in working landscapes. However, critical questions about stakeholder engagement in this space remain. These include normative, political, and ethical questions concerning who participates, who benefits and loses, what good can be accomplished, and for what, whom, and by who. First, opportunities for addressing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion interests through engagement, while implied in key conceptual frameworks, remain underexplored in scholarly work and collaborative practice alike. A second line of inquiry relates to research-practice gaps. While both the practice of doing engagement work and scholarly research on the efficacy of engagement is on the rise, there is little concerted interplay among 'on-the-ground' practitioners and scholarly researchers. This means scientific research often misses or ignores insight grounded in practical and experiential knowledge, while practitioners are disconnected from potentially useful scientific research on stakeholder engagement. A third set of questions concerns gaps in empirical understanding of the efficacy of engagement processes and includes inquiry into how different engagement contexts and process features affect a range of behavioral, cognitive, and decision-making outcomes. Because of these gaps, a cohesive and actionable research agenda for stakeholder engagement research and practice in working landscapes remains elusive. In this review article, we present a co-produced research agenda for stakeholder engagement in working landscapes. The co-production process involved professionally facilitated and iterative dialogue among a diverse and international group of over 160 scholars and practitioners through a yearlong virtual workshop series. The resulting research agenda is organized under six cross-cutting themes: (1) Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion; (2) Ethics; (3) Research and Practice; (4) Context; (5) Process; and (6) Outcomes and Measurement. This research agenda identifies critical research needs and opportunities relevant for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike. We argue that addressing these research opportunities is necessary to advance knowledge and practice of stakeholder engagement and to support more just and effective engagement processes in working landscapes.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42532-022-00132-8.

Increasing complexity of river management is driving the need for more participatory approaches in which a wide range of stakeholders inform management actions. The foundational conditions of successful stakeholder engagement in participatory river management include the stakeholders' familiarity with, the trustworthiness of, shared vision with, and perceived competence of agencies involved in river management. We employ a convergent mixed‐methods approach to gain insight into two key stakeholder groups' (agricultural producers and non‐farm households) perceptions of foundational conditions of successful stakeholder engagement in participatory river management in watersheds of two regulatorily disparate states. Overall, ratings for familiarity were often contrary to ratings of the other three conditions. Contrary to previous research our findings suggest that familiarity does not necessarily lead to stakeholder perceived trustworthiness, shared vision, and competence of those involved in river management. These findings are important for participatory processes; for example, trust and shared vision without familiarity may inhibit the active involvement of diverse stakeholders in participatory processes that are needed for improving the management of complex riverine systems. Our findings suggest agencies and groups involved in river management prioritize developing stronger relationships with agricultural producers to improve on these foundational conditions. Agencies and groups involved in river management rated low on familiarity should consider campaigns to increase stakeholders' familiarity with them to leverage the generally high ratings on the other three foundational conditions. Future research should explore these contrary findings and their relationships to active involvement in participatory river management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to take a more inclusive approach to understanding gas-extraction employment and its intersection with family life and community by also examining the experiences of fathers who do not work directly on an oil and gas rig but who are subcontracted to work for the gas industry, often as truck drivers or in construction trades. We analyzed data from semi-structured interviews with fathers who held any Marcellus Shale gas extraction-related ('gas patch') job and their wives living in rural Pennsylvania communities. We identified five themes: (a) families felt a connection with the rural community, (b) Marcellus Shale created much-needed job opportunities across the gas patch in the community, (c) Marcellus Shale development improved fathers' wages, (d) gas-patch dads' long work hours and schedules meant less family time, and (e) families educated community residents to reduce stigma about the gas industry. Community stigma around the oil and gas industry had negative effects on the family; community acceptance was important for gas-patch workers' job satisfaction and family life. These findings demonstrate the utility of examining the intersection of family, work, and community contexts in understanding the experiences of workers in controversial jobs and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the debate surrounding the inception of the Conservation Security Program (CSP) under the 2002 US Farm Bill as a possible expression of ecological modernization by examining the discursive contributions made by official actors, social movement organizations, and producer organizations. Based on this analysis, the CSP embodies different expectations in terms of ecological modernization. Social movement actors view the program as a pragmatic solution to environmental problems created by productivist agriculture. Official actors and farm lobby representatives argue that the program should serve to create the pre-conditions for the eventual commodification of the natural resource benefits resulting from agricultural activity. These divergent discourses create multiple expectations of policies--reflecting both traditional productivist and post-productivist regimes. Using an ecological modernization framework allows us to see both the commonalities and differences in these approaches, and provides insight into the ways in which discourses surrounding global agri-environmental policies might play out in states' different political, social, economic, and ecological contexts. (Contains 1 table.)

This analysis reexamines factors affecting farm change during the Farm Crisis using spatial analysis techniques to identify important spatial factors and correct for spatial autocorrelation. Results indicate the importance of indicators of farm structure, percent of prime farmland, and state-level processes in predicting changes in the number of farms. The findings also suggest a spatially-dependent process: counties near each other in space experienced similar types and rates of change in the number of farms. Reasons for the effects of geographic proximity are explored. (Contains 1 figure, 4 tables and 16 footnotes.)

Industry 'clusters' are groups of businesses that are part of the same industry, share a common characteristic, coordinate some parts of their business activities but are competitive in others, and [...]

In the past three decades, a paradigm shift has elevated stakeholder engagement in natural resource governance, emphasizing collaborative approaches for effective decision-making. While academic literature increasingly endorses engagement methods, a gap persists in our knowledge of the methods and outcomes of such processes. To address this disparity, we systematically reviewed 261 peer-reviewed studies on stakeholder engagement in water resource management from 2000 to 2019. Analyses find that data-driven studies of engagement processes and outcomes from engagement processes are limited in the peer-reviewed literature. Our findings underscore the need for consistent vocabulary and theoretical frameworks and increased empirical evaluation to enhance our understanding of stakeholder engagement processes and outcomes in water resource management. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings and synthesizing the methods suggested by the general literature for creating more inclusive, replicable, and impactful engagement-related research and practice in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communities experiencing rapid growth due to energy development ('boomtowns') have reported positive and negative impacts on community and individual well-being. The perceptions of impacts vary according to stage of energy development as well as experience with extractive industries. Development of the Marcellus Shale provides an opportunity to examine these impacts over time and across geographic and historical contexts. This paper describes case study research in Pennsylvania and New York to document preliminary impacts of development occurring there. Cases vary by level of development and previous extractive history. The study finds that, in areas with low population density, higher levels of development lead to a broader awareness of natural gas impacts, both positive and negative. Participants draw from the regional history of extraction to express environmental concern despite direct, local experience. Our findings suggest the need to track these perceptions during development, and as individuals and communities react and adapt to the impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the 2002 Census of Agriculture, women comprised 11% of principal farm operators and 27% of all farm operators. Here we report findings from a needs assessment conducted to understand the educational needs of women farmers in Pennsylvania. We describe the characteristics of the women who responded to the needs assessment, the problems they face in making their farm operation successful, and the program topics and formats they prefer. Finally, we provide recommendations to increase Extension engagement with this growing clientele. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter 5 of Part I of the book "Beyond the Rural-Urban Divide: Cross-Continental Perspectives on the Differentiated Countryside and Its Regulation," Volume 14, is presented. It explores a research regarding the perceptions of the agricultural impact on local communities, which represents both production and consumption interests, in Pennsylvania. It also examines the policy choices needed to support the multifunctionality of agriculture and the potential hindrance in implementing such policies.

The environmental movements of the 1960s and 1970s originally appealed only to small groups of people. Today, however, popular culture has embraced environmentalism. The emergence of recycling ordinances and "green" marketing signals an increased awareness of environmental issues. Yet many of the groups dedicated to social change for the protection of the environment have stepped beyond "environmental concern" toward a philosophical viewpoint labeled "deep ecology" or "radical environmentalism." People in these organizations endorse an ecocentric rather than an anthropocentric worldview, they consider humans to be no more than another species in the natural world, without special value. Numerous studies of environmental attitudes have focused on public concern for specific, concrete environmental issues, such as air and water pollution, environmental regulation of industry, land use, protection of endangered species, aesthetic concerns, and so forth. Attention, therefore, has shifted from specific environmental issues to the social worldviews that formulated individual responses to these issues. It is the "basic worldview or values about how humanity fits within the physical world has a direct relationship to the level of environmental knowledge.