Monitoring the Community Impacts of the Northwest Forest Plan: An Alternativeto Social Indicators

Abstract

Use of existing data sources has made the social indicators approach an attractive method for anticipating the social and economic effects of policy changes on resource-dependent communities. Despite its practicality, this approach is severely limited by data availability and reliance on aggregate figures that obscure variation between smaller areas. A forest-dependent community in Washington State was studied in an attempt to discern the effects of the Northwest Forest Plan on local-level social and economic conditions using data from secondary sources supplemented by targeted interviews. Findings from this pilot study strongly suggest that a social indicators approach cannot determine the causal factors behind social and economic change in rural communities. We propose a strategy for repeated surveys of communities and recommend an investment in longitudinal analysis of community businesses, households, and individuals in locales thought likely to be affected by changes in federal land management policies.

Keywords:

• community sustainability
• research methods
• small-area studies
• social and economic monitoring
• social indicators

The writing of this article and the research reported herein were supported by Subagreement 98200HS005 to Cooperative Agreement USGS 1435-98HQ-AG-2200 between the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Washington. The U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management provided funding for this project.

Notes

1 A complete case-study draft is available from the authors; this brief discussion is intended to illustrate the practical difficulties associated with this methodological approach.

2 Limitations on space prevent us from presenting a full explanation of this methodology. For a detailed explanation of how case study design can be used to structure hypothesis testing, we refer the reader to Yin (1994) and the extensive literature on quasi-experimental design from which he draws the logic of his design principles.