An Approach to Increase People’s Participation in Conserving Forest Resources in Sephien National Forest Conservation Area located between Champasak Province and Attapeu Province, Lao PDR

Abstract

The purposes of this study were 1. to examine factors affecting people’s participation in conserving forest resources, 2. to develop an approach to increase people’s participation in conserving forest resources, and, 3. to carry out a trial run and assess the designed approach in increasing the people’s participation in forest resources conservation. Phase One: this mixed-methods study was conducted to examine factors affecting people’s participation in conserving forest resources. The samples consisted of 385 heads of household, aged over 18, from 56 villages located in Sephien forest conservation. The collected data were analyzed by the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in the LISREL program. Phase Two: the researcher gathered 30 stakeholders into focus groups and brainstorming sessions, aiming to develop an approach to increase people’s participation in conserving forest resources. Phase Three: the designed approach was carried out to 30 villagers from Baan Sod in Champasak Province. The researcher then analyzed the pre-and-post test result of the designed approach using repeated measure MANOVA (α=.05) The results showed that 1) The factors affecting people’s participation in conserving forest resources were attitude, awareness, knowledge, information retrieval and incentive, respectively.The variance of dependent variables can be described at 56 percentage points ( =0.56). 2) The approach to increase people’s participation in conserving forest resources consisted of 13 activities. 3)There were statistically significant differences at the level of .05 between the pre-and-post test result of the approach