Assessing the relative influence of land-use policies on land managers.

What were we trying to find out?Scotland has a suite of different policies relating to land use, reflecting the complexities of balancing different land-use aims, including food production and forestry, environmental protection, climate change mitigation and socio-economic benefits. This research explored the relative influence of different land-use policies on the decision-making processes of a range of different key stakeholders.What did we do?We used Q methodology, which involves participants ranking different land-use policies based on their influence on land-use decisions and their ability to achieve their land-use goals. Organisations with direct influence over land-use decisions and membership organisations (whose members managed land and made land-use decisions) were interviewed. Interviews with 12 organisations were conducted between February – March 2024.What did we learn?The analysis identified 5 distinct representative perspectives (factors) on the influence of land-use policies on decision-making processes: Conservationists, Public and Community Interests, Food Producers, Private Interests, and Crofting Interests. There was a high degree of divergence between these perspectives underscoring the contested nature of land-use aims and consequently the land-use policy landscape in Scotland. Key themes emerging from the analysis highlighted the high degree of influence attributed to incentive-based legislation and financial support, the impact of uncertainty, complexity, and lack of clarity within the policy landscape, and a preference for landscape-scale approaches to promote holistic land management strategies.What do we recommend?The recommendations include establishing a clear framework for subsidies and financial incentives in the Agriculture and Rural Communities (Scotland) Bill1, enhancing advisory and knowledge exchange services to support sustainable land-use practices and navigate policy complexities, implement landscape scale approaches which can combine democratically informed landscape scale land-use with targeted regulations and environmental protections. Such a model could be explored in the context of the Scottish Government’s commitment to designating at least one new National Park by 2026.