Future of the hills of Scotland: Stakeholders’ preferences for policy priorities

This paper sets out to assess stakeholders’ preferences for policy priorities for the management of the hill areas of Scotland, using an adaptive conjoint analysis (ACA) method. The method is used to evaluate trade-offs that stakeholders make between policy priorities. A pre-survey was carried out to obtain a large number of defining characteristics of a Scottish hill land system, which were subsequently narrowed down to 20 attributes. A survey was implemented, where a range of stakeholders, who had an interest in the hill and upland areas of Scotland, were asked to select and rank five attributes (out of the 20) that, for them, best described a hill system. They were also asked to describe what constituted both good and poor levels for each of their 5 chosen attributes. A computerised ACA questionnaire was designed, using attributes and levels defined from the previous surveys. Respondents were asked what the policy targets for management choices and options should be in the next 10 years for the Scottish hill areas. Policy simulations were subsequently carried out using the ACA software, to compare stakeholders’ actual preferences with seven different policy profiles, designed to reflect current land use issues and orientations for the Scottish hills.