Stakeholders' Perceptions Concerning Greek Protected Areas Governance

In this paper, we are interested in assessing the Greek protected areas' (PAs) operation, and in particular, to what extent the stakeholders engaged in their management consider that the good environmental governance criteria are met. Through the use of Q-methodology, we find that, despite the very different circumstances of each PA, the stakeholders' views cluster around four distinctive main perspectives (or factors). Furthermore, we find that stakeholders do not consider, overall, that the Greek PAs management strongly meets any of the good environmental governance criteria, with particularly poor assessments on crucial governance aspects such as a shared vision guiding the PA management, the rule of law, and the effectiveness/efficiency of the procedures, which suggests that the environmental governance of Greek PAs is suboptimal at least.

Automated summary

This study assesses the operation of Greek protected areas and evaluates to what extent stakeholders believe that good environmental governance criteria are met. Using Q-methodology, the study identifies four main perspectives among the stakeholders. The findings suggest that overall, the management of Greek protected areas does not strongly meet the criteria of good environmental governance, particularly in terms of shared vision, the rule of law, and the effectiveness/efficiency of procedures.