Differential Framing of Environmental Disputes by Stakeholder Groups

Abstract

This paper contributes to a developing literature on the role of framing in organizational settings and in protracted environmental disputes in particular. The paper identifies four frame types (risk, conflict management, power, and views of nature frames) that can be used to understand how disputants make sense of environmental conflicts and offers predictions about differential use of these four frames by environmental disputants. Our results substantiate some differences in the frames utilized by different stakeholder groups - revealing predicable antagonisms as well as the presence of strange bedfellows. We link frame usage to the intractability of conflict and offer some recommendations for handling these frame-based disputes. Finally, our results suggest that greater insight into environmental conflicts may be derived from understanding the patterns of frames held by disputants rather than concentrating solely on interest-based stakeholder groupings.