In the Mediterranean basin, climate models predict future scenarios characterized by more frequently uncertain hydrological services. European policies increasingly promote new models of water management based on river basins as socioecological systems and participatory strategies to ensure better inclusiveness and representativeness of all local actors. Practice has demonstrated the value of stakeholder engagement for achieving more productive and beneficial outcomes of decision-making in landscape management and conservation policies. However, sometimes participatory processes do not lead to effective results. One reason could be related to different understandings of concepts. There is, in fact, still limited research assessing whether the concepts or technical terms used in those processes are understood in the same way by the participants. Therefore, our study aims to explore the mental constructs of stakeholders through a combination of semi-structured interviews and hand-made drawings, using the concept of the river basin as a study concept. We found differences in the relationships between stakeholders’ ways of drawing and describing the river basin starting from its mental constructs. The results also showed that the way stakeholders construct ideas and views related to the landscape influenced some factors that stakeholders used to express them, such as the drawing shape, drawing length, emotions and associated values used in the descriptions. Likewise, mental constructs were influenced by stakeholders’ profiles and their working position. This study highlights that a better understanding of stakeholders' perceptions and their understandings could be essential if we are to achieve more effective and inclusive participatory processes in complex and dynamic socioecological contexts.

在地中海盆地，气候模型预测了以更频繁地不确定水文服务为特征的未来情景。欧洲政策越来越多地促进基于河流流域的新水资源管理模式作为社会生态系统和参与性战略，以确保所有当地参与者的包容性和代表性更好。实践证明了利益相关者的参与对于在景观管理和保护政策中实现更有成效和更有益的决策结果的价值。然而，有时参与过程并不能带来有效的结果。一个原因可能与对概念的不同理解有关。事实上，评估参与者是否以相同方式理解这些过程中使用的概念或技术术语的研究仍然有限。因此，我们的研究旨在通过半结构化访谈和手绘图相结合，以流域概念为研究概念，探索利益相关者的心理结构。我们发现利益相关者绘制和描述流域的方式之间的关系从其心理结构开始存在差异。结果还表明，利益相关者构建与景观相关的想法和观点的方式影响了利益相关者用来表达它们的一些因素，例如描述中使用的绘画形状、绘画长度、情感和相关价值。同样，心理结构受利益相关者的概况和他们的工作职位的影响。本研究强调，更好地了解利益相关者的