Want a Reality Check? Talk to the Opt-Outers

By Adam Miller

At Planet Indonesia, we pride ourselves on advancing community-led initiatives across social-environmental dimensions. It’s in our DNA, our core model, and our impact hinges upon this value, that communities must have ownership of the process of identifying and realizing solutions.

Community members organizing restoration and agroforestry activities

But we aren’t perfect, and we are constantly learning. Two years ago, we set out on a process to understand how we could be falling short in catalyzing community participation in locally-led and run governance institutions (e.g. Conservation Coops, Village forest management units, etc.).

Where to start? Talk to the people in local communities who decide not to participate in local governance institutions. These institutions are run by communities, have elected leaders, and oversee all activities in each community we partner with. But some people repeatedly choose to opt out.

Studying non-participation

Reflecting on Participation: Understanding Community Perspectives

We started with a review of previous research on why some people do not participate in conservation, climate, and development programs. We can save you some time by telling you the literature is few and far between. Most evaluations are set on understanding the before-after impact on those who opt-in. 

If non-participants are at all included, they are framed as control groups to strengthen evidence of program success, because participants’ lives improve while the lives of opt-outers remain static, or so is the thought process of the impact evaluation sector. But our hunch was that opt-outers could provide a critical set of insights, motivations, and stories that we need to understand.

To dig deeper, we worked with researchers from Cambridge University, Lancaster University, Open University, and Universitas Tanjungpura. Our study aimed to understand why individuals in nine communities around the Gunung Nyiut Nature Reserve decided not to participate in community-led governance bodies. It was published in June in the prestigious journal Biological Conservation.

How we conducted the study

Survey design and interviews

We used snowball saturation sampling and semi-structured interviews, surveying both non-participants and key informants. We created eight cards with a picture and reason for non-participation on each one; these initial eight reasons were developed based on our literature review and informal interviews with community leaders prior to the start of the study.

We asked individuals to pick their top two cards. Then, in the second half of the interview, we asked them to provide further reasoning and explanation for picking those cards. The qualitative data was then coded and turned into additional reasons for non-participation. 

Time, Clarity, and Feeling Invited

Non-participants identified a range of reasons for opting-out, the top three being a lack of time (26%), clarity on goals (18%), and not feeling welcome (17%). Other reasons were diverse from ‘previous negative experience with NGOs’ to ‘too often outside the village’ to ‘distrust in others.’

Interestingly, dissatisfaction with the services offered was not a predominant reason for non-participation; only 8% of people said they weren’t interested in program services or activities.

This suggests that the program activities and services were largely aligned with local solutions and priorities. This alignment could be attributed to an extensive co-design process that engaged community members in decision-making and our investment in community ownership. However, despite this alignment, non-participation persisted due to other significant factors.

So, what mattered for non-participants?

• Time. Time emerged as a critical barrier, with respondents noting various livelihood burdens, particularly subsistence farming and cash crop farming, as well as other employment responsibilities. Childcare responsibilities, especially among women, further exacerbated time constraints, underscoring the gender dimensions of time.
  

• Clarity. Uncertainty surrounding the approach was another prominent barrier to participation. This uncertainty stemmed from a lack of understanding about the objectives, potential benefits, and joining processes.

Balancing Livelihoods: Time Constraints in Community Participation

• Invitation and Trust. Feelings of not being invited or welcomed to participate were closely linked to uncertainty and distrust. Many respondents expressed a desire for more direct and personalized invitations from leaders, peer community members, and Planet Indonesia. They underlined the importance of trust and relationships, which were the pinnacle of increasing participation in local governance institutions.

This sentiment was particularly pronounced in larger communities (1000 individuals+) rates, suggesting that targeted and personalized engagement strategies may be more effective in such contexts.

A small but notable subset of non-participants cited ideological opposition to the conservation objectives. Interestingly, this opposition was primarily voiced by men, indicating potential gender dynamics at play in shaping perceptions of conservation initiatives.

We also asked Key Informants, namely local leaders of governance institutions, we support what their thoughts on non-participation were. Key informants largely echoed these findings but emphasized the need for improved communication and understanding to increase participation rates. They highlighted the importance of better data sharing, tailored outreach efforts, and evidence-sharing of program benefits to engage prospective participants effectively. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, they didn’t attribute non-participation to trust in their leadership despite that being identified by opt-outers.

Their insights do highlight the importance of data justice and ensuring that community members have quick easy access to data and results. Data sheds light on benefits, and key informants told us in this day and age word of mouth often isn’t good enough. Even rural areas want proof, in data, of how their time commitment pays off.

What this means for conservation

These findings have important implications for the sector.

Despite the recognition that increased opportunities for meaningful decision-making control can have positive conservation outcomes, this is premised on the assumption that people want to and can participate. There is a big emphasis on the can.

This has even larger implications for incentive-based schemes such as carbon, biodiversity, water credits, and other payment for ecosystem service schemes. Climate models are currently going wild on the market.  

The success of these initiatives hinges upon the use of financial incentives to catalyze participation - join and get paid for action.

Our results suggest that this will fall short. Time, perceptions, trust, access to data, and ownership of results all matter, probably more than money and certainly more than the sector currently realizes.

Beyond Incentives: Trust, Perception, and Community Engagement Matter

So what’s next for us? In our second post, we will explore:

• Tackling the hard questions ethically, we want to make sure we reach everyone or at a least, there are no unfair barriers that limit participation by those who need access to various program provisions. But with limited resources, from an impact perspective, do we need to reach everyone to generate a transformative impact? How much is “enough” and perhaps more importantly, are the right people being reached?

• Time is a variable that seems to be largely overlooked in the conservation space. What does this mean for benchmark programs in the community conservation sector such as alternative livelihoods or economic incentives? What does this mean for Planet Indonesia? 

• Given these results, how are we responding and adjusting moving forward? (Spoiler alert: it has something big to do with data justice and results ownership)

Stay tuned for our second blog post on this research, which will talk about how we are using these results to adapt and improve our core model and ways of working moving forward. 

Read more: Presenting the “Governance Index”: A new tool for tracking and analyzing Community-led Governance

If you have any questions please reach out via admin@planetindonesia.org. Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on our social media Facebook here, Instagram here, and LinkedIn here to get timely updates on our activities, an insider’s look into the lives of front-line conservationists, and ongoing programs.