How to measure the social acceptability of alternative environmental management solutions in wetlands and other ecosystems

The paper provides a conceptual framework and a guidance to analyse the social acceptability (SA) of environmental restoration and alternative management options, particularly in the case of wetlands. Social acceptability is a fundamental step to guarantee the success of environmental management projects, that should also consider stakeholders’ perceptions and preferences to ensure the true effectiveness of restoration actions. However, many restoration projects fail to integrate socio-economic analyses and bio-geo-physical research. To the best of our knowledge no systematic review and guidelines exist for the assessment of social acceptability and this paper explores the most recent international (academic and grey) literature with the aim to assess the state-of-the-art on SA assessment and to develop an original methodological framework to identify local stakeholders’ perceptions and preferences for ecosystem restoration options.