Farmers' participation in European Regional Platforms on Coexistence between People and Large Carnivores: Perceived conflict, stakeholder interaction, and evaluation of participatory processes

Abstract Although there have been several initiatives to establish and support participatory processes on large carnivores based on multi‐stakeholder governance at the regional level in Europe, empirical evidence for their evaluation is still lacking. We employed a survey, which was administered to farmers and other stakeholder groups (e.g. local authorities, hunters, conservationists and the tourist industry). We included in data collection participants in new multi‐stakeholder platforms, established under a contract of the European Commission in 2018, and platforms having been set up earlier and still operating in Sweden and Finland. We launched the survey in two rounds, with a time frame in‐between of one full year of platform operation. Compared to other stakeholder groups, farmers attended more meetings in both new and old platforms. Perceived human–carnivore conflict in new platforms remained more or less stable in the first and second round of questionnaire administration, while the perception of stakeholder interaction changed from conflictual to collaborative for farmers and other stakeholders. In the second round, stakeholder negotiation and collaboration were much more pronounced within new platforms. We found that platforms were perceived to promote positive stakeholder interaction allowing space for negotiation between groups already in the first round. Considering that participants in new platforms believed that collaboration between stakeholders was the norm in the second round, we may infer that new platforms supported constructive stakeholder interaction. Farmers reported that they worked well with key stakeholders, and it was revealed that they were trusted as much or even more than other stakeholders. In the second round, farmers in new platforms focused their attention on damage prevention measures and on improving measures and tools available in Rural Development Programmes. Future research should explore in more detail how multi‐actor settings like platforms may support social learning among farmers and other stakeholders. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.