Wildlife Watchers in the Western United States: A Structural Approach for Understanding Policy Change
Title:
Wildlife Watchers in the Western United States: A Structural Approach for Understanding Policy Change
Author:
Mangun, Jean C. Mangun, William R.
Appeared in:
Human dimensions of wildlife
Paging:
Volume 7 (2002) nr. 2 pages 123-137
Year:
2002
Contents:
Public policy decision making can be affected by changes in governing coalitions, resource distributions, social structure, and other factors external to a particular policy subsystem. Social and economic factors external to the wildlife policy subsystem have experienced dramatic change in recent years, particularly in the western states. Wildlife watchers comprise a well-defined target population within the western wildlife policy subsystem. The present study applies aspects of Blau's quantitative model of social structure to obtain measures of group membership, status position, and overlapping social affiliations exhibited by wildlife watchers in the West. Data were obtained from the follow-up phases of the 1985, 1991, and 1996 National Surveys of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation. Longitudinal analysis of three indices of social diversity provides a method for assessing the structural stability of a policy target population with readily available federal survey data.
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