Although often limited in terms of extent or accuracy, mental models—i.e., explanations of the surrounding world and how things work within it—provide confidence and frameworks to navigate life's uncertainties. Unfortunately, differing and yet similar mental models held collectively by groups can lead to problematic behavior, misunderstandings, and conflict on large scales. Such challenges are likely familiar to natural resource managers who, in the course of their work, must consider issues that are neither simple nor exclusively ecological or social in nature. Building mental models of various groups’ understanding of a complex natural resource may help managers address the impacts of resource-related behaviors but can be a difficult task when collecting modeling data from large and diverse user groups. Using a sequential, exploratory approach, our study addresses the utility of surrogate mental modeling to explore (a) mental models held by key players from six stakeholder groups associated with Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats (US), and (b) whether these key players were confident that their personal subjective models represented their own group's thinking about Bonneville. We sought to illuminate and compare stakeholder groups’ mental models of subjectively important social and ecological concepts related to Bonneville through the use of fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs; i.e., semi-quantitative representations of mental models) constructed in Mental Modeler. Analysis revealed differences among groups’ FCMs and levels of perceived complexity, as well as areas of agreement regarding the strength, direction, and character of certain social-ecological relationships. Intersections and divergences in stakeholder mental models may provide logical starting points for communal knowledge-building that can perhaps lessen tension among groups attributable to conceptual misunderstandings of resource-specific complexity.

尽管通常在范围或准确性方面受到限制，但心理模型（即对周围世界及其内部事物的解释）提供了信心和框架，以应对生活中的不确定性。不幸的是，群体所持有的不同但相似的心理模型可能会导致大规模的问题行为、误解和冲突。自然资源管理者可能熟悉此类挑战，他们在工作过程中必须考虑既不简单也不完全是生态或社会性质的问题。建立各种群体对复杂自然资源的理解的心理模型可能有助于管理人员解决资源相关行为的影响，但在从大型和多样化的用户群体中收集建模数据时可能是一项艰巨的任务。使用顺序，替代心理模型，以探索 (a) 来自与犹他州邦纳维尔盐滩（美国）相关的六个利益相关群体的主要参与者持有的心理模型，以及 (b) 这些关键参与者是否确信他们的个人主观模型代表了他们自己的团队对邦纳维尔的看法. 我们试图通过使用在Mental Modeler 中构建的模糊认知图（FCM；即心智模型的半定量表示）来阐明和比较利益相关者群体对与 Bonneville 相关的主观重要社会和生态概念的心智模型. 分析揭示了群体 FCM 和感知复杂程度之间的差异，以及在某些社会生态关系的强度、方向和特征方面的共识领域。利益相关者心智模型的交叉和分歧可能为公共知识构建提供合乎逻辑的起点，这或许可以减轻由于对特定资源复杂性的概念误解而导致的群体之间的紧张关系。