Using Canonical Correlation Analysis to Identify Environmental Attitude Groups: Considerations for National Forest Planning in the Southwestern U.S.

Abstract

As public land management agencies pursue region-specific resource management plans, with meaningful consideration of public attitudes and values, there is a need to characterize the complex mix of environmental attitudes in a diverse population. The contribution of this investigation is to make use of a unique household, mail/internet survey data set collected in 2007 in the Southwestern United States (Region 3 of the U.S. Forest Service). With over 5,800 survey responses to a set of 25 Public Land Value statements, canonical correlation analysis is able to identify 7 statistically distinct environmental attitudinal groups. We also examine the effect of expected changes in regional demographics on overall environmental attitudes, which may help guide in the development of socially acceptable long-term forest management policies. Results show significant support for conservationist management policies and passive environmental values, as well as a greater role for stakeholder groups in generating consensus for current and future forest management policies.

Analyzing the Nexus between Personal Values and Consumption Values of Consumers’ Preference for Fresh Fish

“…Although there is no general rule as regard the selection of the size of coefficient that are interpretable compared to factor analysis, but based on previous studies, the present study also reported only canonical variates whose absolute value is greater than 0.20 as cut-off point (Prera et al 2014). The results in Tables 5 and 6 are presented according to Dattalo (2014) for easy interpretation.…”

“…CCA is found to be commonly used in social and behavioral sciences and has been used by many researchers (Prera, et al 2014;Andleeb, 2016;Suchanek and Kralova, 2018). Several advantages are associated with CCA over others statistical tools.…”