The usefulness of Decision Support Systems in participatory forest planning: a comparison between Finland and Italy

Aim of study: Participation of stakeholders is considered an essential element in producing, at different spatial and temporal scales, forest plans accepted by local community and fulfilling the requirements of Sustainable Forest Management. Increasingly, computer-based decision support systems (DSS) and tools are being introduced to assist stakeholders and decision-makers in coping with the complexities inherent in participatory forest planning. The study aimed to investigate how useful the users and researchers see DSS tools and which opportunities they perceive DSS might carry for enhancing participatory forest planning in their field of activity. Area


Introduction
Various regions throughout the world face the challenge of planning the use and management of forests in a socially acceptable way.During the past two decades the shift from top-down expert decisions to participatory planning processes has given more attention to the views and experiences of local people and interest groups such as land owners, industry, hunters, recreational organizations, and environmental NGOs.As a result, the decision-making tasks within the planning processes have become more complicated and information needs more demanding (Kangas et al., 2008;Laamanen and Kangas, 2011;Nordström et al., 2011).
Participatory planning of forest resources has evolved as a mix of preference elicitation, forest resource analysis and group negotiation activities (Buchy and Hoverman, 2000;Kangas et al., 2006;Mendoza and Prabhu, 2006).In different countries and planning contexts, varying process models have been applied.In general, however, the planning process includes three separate phases: intelligence, design and choice (Simon, 1960).Intelligence means gathering the pertinent information, design means defining the possible options or courses of action and choice means selecting the best

The usefulness of Decision Support Systems in participatory forest
planning: a comparison between Finland and Italy option.In each of the phases it is possible to utilize computer-based decision support systems (DSS) or tools.Several computer-based tools have been used to provide background information as well as to generate new information in the course of the planning cases (Díaz-Balteiro and Romero, 2008;Ananda and Herath, 2009).DSS can also be used to provide illustrations for evaluating the proposed actions (e.g.Fürst et al., 2010).
In different countries, the available DSS are different, and the culture of using DSS varies.For instance in Finland, MELA system (Redsven et al., 2011) with a growth and yield simulator and linear optimisation possibilities has been in active use since 1970's.More recently, MCDM (multiple criteria decision making) tools such as MESTA or Web-Hipre have been used to facilitate interactive participatory planning, in smallgroup setting in particular (Pykäläinen et al., 2001;Hiltunen et al., 2009;Mustajoki et al., 2011).In Italy, where the culture of developing and using DSS in the ambit of planning forest resources is relatively new, DSS are not widely used.However, in recent years there has been an attempt to introduce computerized procedures in forest decision making processes and some DSS are under construction.ProgettoBosco, a data-driven DSS for forest planning (Ferretti et al., 2011), is currently the most widely used.There are examples of using computerized tools in participatory forest planning also in other European countries (e.g.Nordström et al., 2010Nordström et al., , 2011;;Lindner et al., 2012).
The way people see the usefulness of forest DSS may also depend on their profession.Researchers in the field are assumed to be well familiar with the DSS tools, their opportunities and limitations, while the forestry professionals may be less so.The DSS is typically developed in research organizations and then gradually introduced to forestry practise.
DSS and related forest planning software have played varying roles in participatory processes in different contexts.The characteristics of forest-problem-specific DSS that could enhance successful participatory planning processes have been analysed theoretically by Menzel et al. (2012).However, there have been no studies about process facilitators' perceptions on the value on DSS in participatory forest planning, and the available feedback from real planning cases only deals with stakeholder participants' post-negotiation feedback (e.g.Pykäläinen et al., 2007, Hiltunen et al., 2009).
Comparative knowledge about the main functions of software, use experiences and development challenges would show a way to improving the usefulness of DSS in participatory forest planning.This study takes a look at the experiences and perceptions of researchers as well as practitioners in Finland and Italy, representing the northern European and Mediterranean approaches, respectively.The aim is to learn about the similarities and differences of use cases and respondents' perceptions on the opportunities that DSS might carry for participatory planning.

Mixed-method interviews with participation experts
The research is based on quantitative-qualitative interview data collected in October and November 2010.A total of 15 interviewees were selected subjectively by the authors (with the support of other experts of the sector) among Finnish and Italian participatory planning experts (8 in Finland and 7 in Italy).The interviewees included i) professors and researchers at universities or research institutes, ii) representants of national or regional forestry centres, iii) professionals of private associations, iv) representants of state enterprises.They were divided into two main categories: professionals and researchers (9 and 6 respectively).

Structure of the interview
A questionnaire suitable for a face-to-face interview was developed to collect data and to work as an interview guide (Appendix I).The final version of the questionnaire was produced after a test phase during which improvements were suggested by participatory planning experts from various countries, institutions and with different background.
The questionnaire comprised 13 close-ended questions, which were chosen to keep the structure simple.Moreover, responses to the closed-end questions are more easily analysed allowing both quantitative and qualitative contemplation.In some cases the respondents had to choose from a list of preset responses.Other questions were formulated to offer an n-options ranking scale.
The themes presented in the questionnaire were: i) since how many years interviewees have been involved in participatory planning; characteristics of participatory planning in which the respondent is mostly involved, from the spatial and temporal point of view; phases of decision process in which participation is used (Q1-Forest planning DSS usefulness: Finland and Italy cases Q2-Q3-Q4); ii) opinions about the potential use-fulness of DSS in improving participatory planning (Q5); iii) experiences with the use of DSS in participatory planning (Q6-Q7-Q8-Q13); and iv) experience-based opinions about the role of DSS in improving various phases of participatory planning and supporting criteria for successful participation process (Q9-Q10-Q11-Q12).
It was assumed that parts i and ii can be submitted also to participation professionals and researchers with no DSS experience, while the parts iii and iv were addressed to people who have used DSS, to collect suggestions from their experiences.The difference between ii and iv is supposed to reflect the deviation between expectations and experiences.

Data acquisition
The interviews were conducted in English, at the place of work of the respondents.One of the authors conducted the interviews, which lasted from 45 to 120 minutes and summarized them after registration.English was the mother tongue neither for the respondents nor the interviewer.The opportunity was used to ask about the meaning of difficult questions in Finnish or Italian.
The face-to-face structured interviews were conducted in the course of filling the questionnaire.In such a way, the order in which questions were asked remained the same, and the questions were always answered within the similar context.The questions and the possible alternative answers were read together by the interviewer and the interviewees.For each question, besides ticking the given answer, there was discussion and exchange of information, in order to collect explanations for responses and to discuss the various related aspects with the interviewees.The discussion was assumed to help to interpret the quantitative results and, furthermore, the discussion was helpful because the interviewees, particularly the practitioners, were often in difficulty to understand the significance of some words and concepts.

Analysis
Recordings of interview discussions as well as interviewer's notes were used as the qualitative part of data while the questionnaire responses formed the quantitative part.The analysis followed a mixed-method principle (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998).Response distributions or mean values were determined for each question by nationality (Finnish/Italian) and by expertise background (researcher/professional). For each question in turn, meaningful statements were extracted from the recordings and notes, and they were looked through to find support and logical interpretations to the quantitative results.The most relevant quotes were finally chosen to the result description as illustrations.

Characteristics of participatory planning
In Finland the respondents had a longer experience in participatory planning than the respondents in Italy (Fig. 1).However, in Italy the participatory approach in forest planning has quickly earned attention in the last decade.In both countries, professionals have less experience than researchers, as expected.Partly this result may, however, be due to the subjective selection of the respondents and the small sample.
Considering the temporal scale of forest management problems (Fig. 2), the Italian interviewees have been more often involved in medium term participatory planning (2 to 10 years) while the Finnish respondents have more experience in long term planning (more than 10 years); only one Finnish interviewee has been mainly involved in short term planning.Professionals have been more often involved in medium term planning while researchers have been involved in long term planning: this implies a slight mismatch in interests and experiences.
From a spatial point of view (Fig. 3), Italian interviewees have been more often involved in forest-level planning (forest landscape with several stands that belong together for a common purpose) than Finnish respondents who have focused most in regional-level planning (a set of landscapes that may be managed each to address different objectives).Professionals and researchers have been involved at the same level.It appears that the long-time scale and large spatial scale are largely related, as well as the medium-time and medium spatial scale.
Considering in which phases of the decision process participation is used (multiple answers were allowed) (Table 1), the Finnish respondents have used it more or less in all the phases.The Italian respondents have used participation most often at the intelligence phase and least often in choice phase.In interview discussions it became clear that even if participation is used in the choice phase, the stakeholders actually do not make the decisions.
"Normally stakeholders are not involved in decision making and they don't take part to the final decision ... They are never directly included in decision making, but in selecting alternatives ... so they have indirect power on the final decision."(interviewee 9,Finland).

General opinion about the potential usefulness of DSS
The scores about the potential usefulness of DSS in improving different tasks of participatory planning given by Finnish and Italian respondents were quite similar but researchers expressed higher scores than professionals for most of the functions.For one question the scores were equal both with respect to the country and to the background (Table 2).The mean of the answers was above 4 (usefulness from moderate to high) in all cases but those concerning formalization of preferences.The mean values below 3 for expressed and non-expressed preferences mean that DSS is not expected to reveal hidden preferences, and among professionals DSS is seen only moderately useful in capturing even the shown preferences.
This element merged more than once in the discussion, particularly from Italian respondents."It's so difficult to collect opinions and expectations from stakeholders ... often they are simple people such as farmers, forest entrepreneurs, timber sellers...they are in difficulties also during an interview."(interviewee 5, Italian) "I'm really puzzled how a DSS can support in formalizing the preferences that stakeholders are not able to express ... it's a problem to collect their preferences.....sometimes it's a problem also to discuss with them ... we have to begin a long process of involvement of the stakeholders..." (interviewee 2, Italian) The highest DSS usefulness scores were given in both countries for improving the transparency and traceability of the participatory planning process.Transparency was also stressed in the open discussions.
"With the use of computerized tools, it is also possible to give every participant a voice, and every opinion will be documented..." (interviewee 13) "The most important function of DSS is to give transparency to the decision making process, and documenting the arguments for and against the management options is important in ensuring transparency ... final guidelines remain publicly archived in the DSS database..." (interviewee 6) DSS was also seen useful in a sense that it can create a common language in a multidisciplinary group  (interviewees 4 and 1), which may also enhance transparency.

Experience with the use of DSS in participatory planning
Most of the respondents assessed that DSS can aid in the participatory planning tasks.Only one Italian researcher said he doesn't use DSS, because it is not needed for participatory planning he is involved in.
However, the DSS used (Table 3) could be generic software, like GIS or Excel rather than forestry DSS or DSS designed for participatory planning (interviewees 3 and 6).Italian respondents frequently affirm that they use only simple DSS.
"In my region, but I suppose all over Italy, participation is common in the development of Regional Forest Plan ... we use very simple DSS like Excel, or Arcview ... we don't have DSS finalized to support participation." (interviewee 7, Italian) "We use simple DSS to support the elicitation and aggregation of the preferences and gathering of the various information…" (interviewee 2, Italian) With regard to the way in which DSS has been used during the participation process (Table 4), Finns reported using a facilitator; for Italians and professionals in particular the support of an expert internal to the organization was frequent.Internet applications and computerized hand-on experiments were rather uncommon, especially in Italy. "

Experience-based opinions about the use and role of DSS
When asked about experience-based opinions of the role of DSS, the scores expressed by Finnish respondents are higher than those of Italian respondents and researchers express higher scores than professionals (Table 5).
The highest values are attributed to "Supporting communicating to stakeholders the information concerning the various alternatives" and "Giving transparency and traceability to the decision-making process" and the lowest to "Facilitating/supporting the formalization of the preferences that stakeholders are not able to express".The scores given based on the experiences are lower than those given to the question of general potential of DSS (see Table 2 and Table 5).The greatest drop from the potential to the experiences by Italian respondents were observed in the task "Supporting communicating to stakeholders the information concerning the various alternatives" and "Supporting communicating to stakeholders the information concerning the decision making process", while among Finnish respondents the largest score drop was observed in the task "Facilitating/supporting the gathering and the organisation of the preferences expressed by the stakeholders".For professionals the drop was deep, but for researchers the average score from experiences was actually higher than the expressed potential.
During the open discussions also the role of DSS in monitoring the achievement of the planning goal was considered.
Forest planning DSS usefulness: Finland and Italy cases 309

"...stakeholders are invited during the period of validity of the plan and there is an information exchange between decision makers and stakeholders... databases are used for this monitoring." (interviewee 8)
Most respondents were able to answer the question concerning the usefulness of DSS tools to achieve the success criteria for participatory planning (Table 6).The scores expressed by Finnish respondents are generally higher than Italian ones, except for "Quality and selection of information", "Cost effectiveness" and "Acceptance of outcome".The scores expressed by researchers and professionals are quite similar except for "Fairness" and "Neutrality of process".Professionals seem more optimistic about the possibilities of DSS in that respect than researchers.An opposite trend can be observed for the "Cost effectiveness".Highest scores on average were given to the "Transparency" criterion, and lowest to the "Accountability" and "Cost effectiveness".
For Italian respondents the role of DSS in fostering creative thinking is lower than for Finns.This aspect was evidenced also in the discussions.
"The use of DSS represents a limitation for creative thinking ... DSS use limits the openness of thinking and the efforts of the stakeholders by offering them prepacked alternatives."(interviewee 4, Italian).
"If the DSS comes to the decision process it can foster thinking, in the sense that decision makers, experts and stakeholders discuss together objectives and alternatives and implement DSS in a creative way." (interviewee 12, Finnish) "The way DSS is used will have a great effect on the benefits it produces.For instance, while a DSS is very formal tool, it can still be used creatively... if the DSS is not flexible it can have an opposite effect, to restrict thinking…" (interviewee 12, Finnish) In the discussions it was stressed by several interviewees that the way in which the DSS is used may be more important than the actual DSS which is used.Some good use case examples were told.It was also noted that DSS could be used in a manipulative way, but the use of DSS could also reduce manipulation."The responsible of the plans puts all the information in the DSS and they cannot manipulate the data, because the data are clear for all the users."(interviewee 2) The Finnish respondents see DSS as more important than Italians in the organization phases, and Italians more important than Finns in the design and choice phases, but the differences are not large (Table 7).Re- searchers see DSS more useful than professionals in most tasks, the only exceptions were the process organisation (a), identifying the stakeholders (c), elicitation and aggregation of stakeholder preference (e and i) and the monitoring of the achievement of the goals set by the stakeholders (n).The reliability of these results suffers from low response rates particularly among Italian respondents, probably reflecting scarce personal experience of the use of DSS.Each of the respondents were obviously thinking about different DSS tools, and they had used the tools in different ways.In the open discussion, for instance, one interviewee (13) pointed out: "MCDM tools are powerful in structuring the problem even if they are not specifically designed for that purpose…" Another respondent (interviewee 4) argued "…DSS can be useful in defining an understandable method or process for the stakeholders…" Many respondents stressed that a DSS might not be useful, if it is introduced late in the process.One respondent (interviewee 2) argued: "The computerised tools are most important in the first phases of the process: to gather various actors around a table using a common tool to organise their ideas."Interviewee 14 pointed out that "In some cases DSS was not useful because it was introduced at a point where the process was already organised." The respondents could also specify the reasons related to negative answers (Question 12).Nobody considered the first two possibilities: DSS available is too costly or too difficult to use.In most of the cases respondents affirm that DSS are not used because they are not needed in the participatory planning they are involved in or because they cannot see the benefit DSS would provide (Fig. 4).Most of the answers are related to the intelligence phase.

Discussion
According to the above results there are deviations in the opinions between the Italian and Finnish respondents, as well as between researchers and professionals.The explanation may lie in personal experiences of using DSS or in the availability of suitable tools, but also on the planning context the interviewees have mostly been involved in.It is noteworthy that the number of informants in the study was only 15, providing scarce evidence base for strong interpretations from the quantitative part of the results.However, the integration of qualitative interview part with the questionnaire f illing increases understanding about the perceptions regarding DSS and thus the validity of devised interpretations.Further, the 15 subjectively selected informants constitute a rather representative sample of the limited overall number of participatory forest planning experts in Finland and Italy.Therefore the quantitative results can be seen as direction-giving perceptions and the qualitative results as a reliable set of viewpoints existing in the current social reality.
Italians use participation mostly in the intelligence phase (Q4).This is most likely due to the planning culture.In specific, a reason can be the planning approach that primarily aims to ensure the due consideration to all stakeholder groups, to involve as many stakeholders as possible, to identify key-actors and therefore facilitate bottom-up decision processes (Paletto et al., 2012).
Professionals are involved in different spatial and temporal planning levels than researchers, which may reflect the different experiences these two groups have in the field.It calls for more interaction in which the parties could learn from each other.An interesting thing is that on average the scores given based on the practical experiences are lower than those given to the question of general potential of DSS (Q9 vs Q5); it can suggest that expectations from DSS are higher than the thus far gained outcomes from DSS application.The expectations could be better fulfilled after learning to use DSS more properly in the participatory planning processes.These lines of thought further underline the importance of knowledge and experience exchange.
Considering the temporal scale of forest management problems (Q2), Finnish and Italian participatory planning experts are not involved in short term planning.Likewise, considering the spatial scale, they are not involved in stand-level planning.It is quite obvious that it isn't usually important to involve stakeholders at operational stand-level planning, but it is important to observe corresponding experiences from respondents.However, it must be noted that in urban or recreational forests participatory DSS-assisted standlevel planning may become more relevant in upcoming years.It is evident that planning professionals need software, action models and exercise to handle also this kind of planning tasks together with the relevant stakeholders.
Italians use DSS less than Finns (Q9 and Q11).This is probably due to the different planning culture, lower expertise in DSS and poorer availability of suitable DSS.It is probable that when the culture of using DSS and pioneer users' personal experiences develop (Italians are younger users than Finns, Q1), the possibilities of using DSS more will increase in Italy.This consideration is strengthened by the fact that the expectations of Italian respondents regarding the potential usefulness of DSS proved to be similar to the Finnish ones.
Organisation and intelligence seem to be the phases where the respondents see little usefulness for DSS.It is probably necessary to provide planning professionals with examples and good experiences of how DSS could be and have been used to foster organisation and intelligence phases of participatory planning.In particular the DSS developer community might need to better show the capability of their DSS.Or, on the other hand, the currently low scores for DSS usefulness may be due to lack of proper DSS for these phases.In this case the prime recommended action would be to create such software.Further research is needed to clarify the situation and select optimal actions to link DSS and use situations.
In the work of Menzel et al. (2012), the potential for a DSS to enhance achieving the success criteria of participatory planning was analysed from a theoretical point of view.They defined that DSS could potentially be helpful (or harmful) regarding fairness, the opportunity to influence outcome, the quality and selection of information, cost effectiveness, challenging the status quo and fostering creative thinking, a structured decision-making process, transparency, and independence and neutrality of the process.These criteria got the highest scores in this study as well, except for cost efficiency and challenging status quo.Menzel et al. (2012) defined that DSS could potentially help with respect to the cost-efficiency, if the information provided by DSS is acceptable and thus reduces the time and money invested in gathering information.The professionals answering the questions in this study probably were considering the number of meetings with stakeholders required and other practical issues.What comes to challenging status quo, Menzel et al. (2012) have the same notion that DSS in this respect be either an asset or a hindrance, depending on how it is used.

Conclusions
The study pointed out that opinions on the opportunities of DSS to foster participatory planning differ between Finland and Italy, and also between researchers and practical professionals in these countries.It is probable that such differences exist in other countries as well.Therefore it is important to tailor the efforts of DSS development and application according to the context at hand.However, international developmental processes are highly important to facilitate knowledge and experience exchange and to reach economy of scale in internationally common DSS development matters.
The respondents underlined that the available DSS don't match exactly with all features that users need (e.g.current DSS don't include properties needed to support the organisation and intelligence phases).Developing forest management DSS for future use should therefore incorporate practical users in the software design phase.Concurrently, the DSS developers and researchers of the field should investigate the properties of participatory planning processes and devise creative DSS functionalities for potential new use cases.Alongside these investigations it would also be important to understand why there are higher expectations than outcomes from DSS application, in order to develop better DSS in the future and to better communicate their pros and cons to the potential users.
The main limitation of the quantitative part of our analysis is that it is based on the information obtained from a quite little number of respondents.This limit is primarily due to the fact that -particularly in Italy, but also in Finland-the researchers and professionals actively involved in participatory planning are quite few.However, the qualitative part of our analysis enabled to acquire a deeper understanding about the respondents' experiences and insights, which makes the evidence base stronger and overall interpretations more reliable.
Participation in forest planning is rapidly developing in these years, consequently the context alters rapidly; for this reason we recommend to implement this kind Forest planning DSS usefulness: Finland and Italy cases of studies with up-to-date results about DSS users' and developers' experiences and perspectives.From these further studies it would be possible to obtain internationally comparative knowledge about the main use situations of software and a sharing of experiences and development challenges that represents a key to reach higher successfulness in using and developing DSS which concretely support participation in forest planning.

Figure 2 .
Figure 1.The experience of the respondents in participatory planning (Q1).

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Phases of the participatory planning process where the DSS has not been used and reason for that (Q12).

Table 1 .
In which phases of the decision process participation is used (Q4)

Table 2 .
The support of the expert is necessary to use DSS ... the crucial point is the way the expert uses the method and the way he's able to communicate information and techniques."(interviewee 3) To what extent it is possible to improve the different tasks of participatory planning with a DSS (Q5).Greatest differences highlighted Note: Number of respondents in each subgroup 6-9.

Table 4 .
How the DSS has been used during the participation process (Q13)

Table 5 .
To what extent the used DSS contribute to improve these tasks of participatory planning (Q9).Greatest differences highlighted Note: Number of respondents in each subgroup 4-9.

Table 6 .
Criteria that DSS tools, communication means and working techniques could be useful to support a successful participation process (Q10).Greatest differences highlighted Note: Number of respondents in each subgroup 4-9.

Table 7 .
Forest planning DSS usefulness: Finland and Italy cases 311 In which phase of the participatory planning process the DSS has been used and to what degree different methods in the DSS have been found useful (Q11) Note: Number of responses varies between 1 and 9 in subgroups, therefore to be interpreted with caution.