title: Goal specificity: a proxy measure for improvements in environmental outcomes in collaborative governance.
abstract: Collaborative governance critics continually call for evidence to support its prevalent use. As is often the case in environmental policy, environmental outcomes occur at a rate incompatible with political agendas. In addition, a multitude of possibly confounding variables makes it difficult to correlate collaborative governance processes with environmental outcomes. The findings of this study offer empirical evidence that collaborative processes have a measurable, beneficial effect on environmental outcomes. Through the use of a unique paired-waterbody design, our dataset reduced the potential for confounding variables to impact our environmental outcome measurements. The results of a path analysis indicate that the output of setting specific pollutant reduction goals is significantly related to watershed partnerships' level of attainment of their environmental improvement goals. The action of setting specific goals (e.g. percentage of load reductions in pollutant levels) is fostered by sustained participation from partnership members throughout the lifecycle of the collaborative. In addition, this study demonstrates the utility of logic modeling for environmental planning and management, and suggests that the process of setting specific pollutant reduction goals is a useful proxy measure for reporting progress towards improvements in environmental outcomes when long-term environmental data are not available.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public and International Affairs, University of North Carolina Wilmington, 601 S. College Rd. Leutze Hall, Wilmington, NC 28403-5607, USA. Electronic address: biddlej@uncw.edu.
authors.forename: Jennifer C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Biddle
authors.affiliation: School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University, 316B Kottman Hall, 2021 Coffey Rd., Columbus, OH 43210, USA. Electronic address: koontz.31@osu.edu.
authors.forename: Tomas M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Koontz
mesh_terms: D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D004777:Environment; D058735:Environmental Policy; D006040:Goals; D008962:Models, Theoretical
keywords: Adaptive management; Collaborative environmental management; Logic model; Path analysis; Watershed partnerships