Social representations (SRs) are systems of values, ideas, and practices that characterize individuals’ and social groups’ relationships to both their social and natural environment. Comparing SRs between places, social groups, and through time is critical to understanding how social-ecological systems (SESs) and their diverse uses are perceived, interpreted, and understood. This knowledge needs to be taken into account to achieve efficient land use management of SESs such as agricultural landscapes. People’s perceptions of the landscape are increasingly studied in sustainability sciences and a growing number of studies use the SR framework for analyzing differences in SRs between stakeholders and localities or for detecting changes over time. Robust methodologies able to compare SRs are required for this purpose. In this paper, we propose a modular approach to studying SRs from words collected from free listing tasks. This approach relies on standardizing definitions of frequency thresholds commonly used to assess SR content, consensus level, and structure. We then illustrate the value of this methodological approach through a comparative study of farmers’ social representations of the agricultural landscape among four contrasted social-ecological contexts in France. We show how our comparative method allows for characterizing spatial variations in SRs and identifying social-ecological factors that influence the structuration and content of SRs. Finally, we discuss our methodological progress and the implications of our results for public policies aimed at managing SESs and in particular agricultural landscapes for conservation.

中文翻译：

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比较景观的社会表征：一种方法论

社会表征 (SR) 是价值观、思想和实践的系统，它表征个人和社会群体与其社会和自然环境的关系。比较不同地点、社会群体和时间的 SRs 对于理解社会生态系统 (SES) 及其不同用途是如何被感知、解释和理解的至关重要。需要考虑这些知识，以实现对农业景观等 SES 的有效土地利用管理。人们对景观的看法在可持续性科学中得到越来越多的研究，越来越多的研究使用 SR 框架来分析利益相关者和地方之间的 SR 差异或检测随时间的变化。为此，需要能够比较 SR 的稳健方法。在本文中，我们提出了一种模块化方法，从免费列表任务中收集的单词中研究 SR。这种方法依赖于通常用于评估 SR 内容、共识水平和结构的频率阈值的标准化定义。然后，我们通过对法国四种对比鲜明的社会生态环境中农民对农业景观的社会表征的比较研究来说明这种方法论方法的价值。我们展示了我们的比较方法如何能够表征 SR 的空间变化，并确定影响 SR 结构和内容的社会生态因素。最后，我们讨论了我们的方法论进展以及我们的结果对旨在管理 SES 尤其是保护农业景观的公共政策的影响。