Revealing the dominant discourses of stakeholders towards natural - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Revealing the dominant discourses of stakeholders towards natural resource management in Port Resolution, Vanuatu, using Q-method

Andrew Buckwell, Chris Fleming, Maggie Muurmans, Jim Smart & Brendan Mackey

Project background – Pacific EcoAdapt

• 5 year project, based in Pacific
• Aims to identify appropriate adaptation interventions in the coastal zone
• Investigates the advantages and limitations of:
• ecosystem‐based approaches to climate change adaptation
• soft‐engineering approaches, which supporting natural processes
• hard‐engineered solutions

in different contexts (rural, urban…)

Republic of Vanuatu

Tanna

Port Resolution

Life in Port Resolution

• ~500 people from 4 tribes
• Village‐based subsistence gardeners ‐ all households grow some food, or

catch fish

• Strong tribal affiliations
• Stronghold of ‘kastom’ – social, economic, natural resource management

decision making is centred on the Nakamal

• Tanna is a place where kastom and modernity co‐exist
• Limited tourism activity, few formal jobs outside the major centre

Life in Port Resolution

Life in Port Resolution

However…

• Kastom is eroding under influence of ‘western’ economic, political and social

thinking – cash / exchange is expanding

• Need to question the current sustainability of kastom management of

resources

• Climate change
• More extreme weather (Category 5 Tropical Cyclone Pam, 2015)
• Changing local microclimates causing change in ideal crop growing conditions
• Coastal processes, erosion
• Oceans warming; risk of coral bleaching; ocean acidification
• Falling garden productivity
• Over‐fishing on in‐shore reefs
• Tourism expansion, population growth = resource pressures

Challenges

Q‐method introduction

• Called ‘Q‐method’ as it is in contrast to ‘R‐method’
• R‐method looks for correlations amongst variables, rather than between

respondents

• Q‐method looks for correlations amongst respondents, rather between variables
• Both a quantitative and qualitative method of discovery
• Seeks to find common discourses / mental models amongst people about a

domain of knowledge

• Renders numerous perspectives into a few dominant perspectives
• Can uncover non‐hypothesised concepts – starts with a ‘blank slate’
• Works with small samples (“strategic sampling” ~ 40‐50)

Q‐method application

• Reveals key discourses
• Basic entities & institutions; assumptions about social relationships;

defines agents & their motives; key metaphors & rhetorical devices

• Understanding commonalities / differences can inform how and where

development‐focused activities can be targeted

• Identified issues for where there is consensus, contention or ambivalence
• Can provide discreet information about best ways to approach a community
• Can identify language and metaphors best suited to communicating with

community

• Can be used as the first phase of CE / CV design – provides insight into attributes

to be traded‐off

Phases of Q‐method

1. Define participants (‘P‐set’) and a ‘primer question’ 2. Establish the extent of issues (‘the concourse’) through expert interviews, focus groups, interviews 3. Determine the draft set of cards (‘Q‐set’) 4. Test the draft Q‐set 5. Refine and finalise Q‐set 6. Run full Q‐set on all participants 7. Quantitative analysis 8. Articulate discreet discourses in plain language 9. Communicate results

Phases of Q‐method

1. Define participants (‘P‐set’) and a ‘primer question’

• Stakeholder set: community members, policy makers, project members

2. Establish the extent of issues (‘the concourse’) through expert interviews, focus groups, interviews

• Focus groups, expert interviews, literature search, experiences from project
• Identified ~50 statements

3. Determine the draft set of cards (‘Q‐set’)

• Iterative process to refine to a manageable number (34)

4. Test the draft Q‐set

• Translated and tested with local Ni‐Vanuatu family

5. Refine and finalise Q‐set

• Finalised language, tone, meaningfulness
• Sketch artist employed

Q‐method overview

• Respondents rank ‘issue cards’ in order of importance
• People tend to think about issues in relation to each other, rather than in

isolation

• Analysis looks for overlapping patterns in the way respondents rank their

cards – ‘factor analysis’

• These dominant patterns can be interpreted as dominant discourses
• Final step subjectively describes these discourses in plain language

“What are the most important issues in your community? There may be lots of challenges that are important, but which of these is most important?”

Card sorting – Primer question

Statements – regulating ES

Statements – provisioning ES

Statements – cultural ES

Statements – social

Statements – health

• Cards placed in quasi‐normal

distribution

• This makes respondents ‘work

harder’ to sort their preferences

• Respondents should be
• bserved and questioned on

sorting strategy to add qualitative richness to study

• High level demographic

information captured

Card sorting – in the field

Card sorting – in the field

Results from Tanna

• Respondents = 55
• Female / Male = 35/20
• Community members / non‐community members = 46/9
• Pure subsistence / other = 37/18
• Other = wage‐earners, business owners, scientists, NGOs, IGOs

Analysis 1: Factor extraction

• Use Ken‐Q for initial analysis
• 8 principle components (factors)

identified

• 3 factors kept for Varimax rotation
• 1 dominant factor, 2 sufficiently

significant, and ‘long tail’

F1 F2 F3 Eigenvalues 12.56 5.04 4.10 Explained variance 23 9 8 Cumulative % Expln Var 23 32 40 Number of people loading 16 17 9

Ideal sort for Factor 1

‘Ideal sort’ is a hypothetical respondent who loads 100% into factor In reality, no one is this. F1a is between 0.4368 and 0.854

Ideal sort for Factor 1

Factor interpretation

• Final stage – translate composite factors (ideal sorts) into plain language

descriptions

• For each composite factor, consider the following:
• What are the statements that are strongly positive or negative
• Are there patterns between the concepts
• Which statements are distinguishing statements in that factor

Factors by statement category

Health Provisioning ES Social Cultural ES Regulating ES

Legend

‐4 = 1 ‐3 = 2 ‐2 = 3 ‐1 = 4 = 5 +1 = 6 +2 = 7 +3 = 8 +4 = 9

Factors by statement category

Health Provisioning ES Social Cultural ES Regulating ES

Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3

Legend

Discourse 1: Strong Kastom

• Emphasis on traditional and customary practices.
• Preoccupation with sustainability of provisioning ES and, to a slightly lesser

extent, regulating ES.

• All statements placed in the top positions related to kastom decision‐making

& natural resource management.

• Low emphasis on economic development opportunities and with elements
• f modernity, such as access to financial services, electricity and voting and

health.

Discourse 2: Kastom + Health

• Emphasis traditional and customary preoccupations, but generally lower

concern with the sustainability of provisioning ES.

• Demonstrate a strong affiliation with the two statements associated with

modern health care and WASH.

• Highest salience on concern for extreme weather, associated with climate

change.

• Three key kastom‐related statements associated with sustaining traditional

practices in the management of resources and practices remained salient.

• Respondents show less affiliation with statements associated with broader

social change, such as access to information and financial services, economic development and voting.

Discourse 3: Tentative Modernity

• Strong affinity to certain elements of kastom and customary management of

resources.

• Much greater affinity with cultural ES, demonstrating a desire to capture

monetary value from nature, through tourism opportunities.

• The two health‐related statements also ranked relatively highly.
• Two female emancipatory statements (decision making and domestic roles)

ranked highly.

• Affinity to economic development and emancipatory concepts signifies a

desire for modernisation towards an exchange‐based economy, however, the connection to kastom shows this affiliation is tentative.

Propensity to belong to discourse

Normalised the value of membership of each factor by calculating how many respondents would load into each factor if the sample was 50% of each pairing (27.5 respondents)

Propensity to belong to discourse

Gender driver of membership of T.M. over Strong Kastom (sig.) and Kastom + Health Non‐community significant driver of membership of T.M.

• ver both Strong Kastom and

Kastom + Health

Factors by tradition/ emancipatory concepts

Traditional/ Kastom Economic development/ Emancipatory Other

Legend

F1: Strong Kastom F2: Kastom + Health F3: Tentative Modernity

Legend

Traditional/ Kastom Economic development/ Emancipatory Other

Factors by tradition/ emancipatory concepts

Consensus statements

Statement number Z‐score

High‐level of agreement Low‐level of agreement

Very high level of agreement: “In my community I do not get enough good drinking water” Very low level of agreement: “We do not have enough toilet, washing and cleaning facilities for all the people in the village”

Factor 1a Factor 2 Factor 3a

And in terms of climate change adaptation…

• Likely a general preference for climate change adaptation based on

ecosystem‐based projects that provide indirect adaptation benefits + co‐ benefits

• Projects need to be sensitive of the importance of kastom resources

management and knowledge but…

• Projects that support economic development (and challenge kastom) may

experience differences in support based on gender

• Outsiders may have a blind‐spot to role of economic development
• Infrastructure provision and formal institutions (government) are

unimportant

Q‐method on Tanna

• Q is viable in situations with risk of low comprehension and low literacy
• Women more amenable than men, but men eventually warm to task
• Language wasn’t a barrier (we had RAs), but speaking Bislama would help in

asking questions about card placement

Thank you & Questions

Andrew Buckwell, Chris Fleming, Maggie Muurmans, Jim Smart & Brendan Mackey