Understanding how changes in the sizes of large carnivore populations affect the attitudes of the public is vital in order to mitigate social conflicts over large carnivore management issues. Using data from two Swedish postal surveys in 2004 and 2009, we examined the probable social effects of a continued increase in the Swedish populations of bear and wolf by comparing levels of direct experience of bears and wolves with public attitudes towards these animals. We report an increase in direct experience of bears and wolves, lower levels of acceptance of the existence of these animals, and a lower degree of support for the policy goals of both species in 2009 compared to 2004. We also find that these changes are more prominent in areas with local carnivore populations than in other areas of Sweden. Our results imply that attitudes towards bears and wolves are likely to become more negative as populations continue to grow. The uneven distributions of the carnivore populations are likely to generate more frequent social conflicts in the future as they could cause an increase in the attitudinal divide between those members of the Swedish public who have had direct experiences of carnivores and those who have not.

Patient and public involvement (PPI) is framed as positive for individuals, the health system, public health, as well as for communities and society as a whole. We investigated whether preferences for PPI differed between two countries with Beveridge type health systems–Sweden and England. We measured willingness to be involved in individual treatment decisions and in decisions about the organization and provision of local health and social care services. This was a comparative cross-sectional study of the general population’s preferences. Together, the two samples included 3125 respondents; 1625 in England and 1500 in Sweden. Country differences were analysed in a multinomial regression model controlling for gender, age and educational attainment. Overall, 68% of respondents wanted a passive patient role and 44% wanted to be involved in local decisions about organization and provision of services. In comparison with in Sweden, they were in England less likely to want a health professional such as a GP or consultant to make decisions about their treatment and also more likely to want to make their own decisions. They were also less likely to want to be involved in local service development decisions. An increased likelihood of wanting to be involved in organizational decision-making was associated with individuals wanting to make their own treatment decisions. Women were less likely to want health professionals to make decisions and more likely to want to be involved in organizational decisions. An effective health system that ensures public health must integrate an effective approach to PPI both in individual treatment decisions and shaping local health and social care priorities. To be effective, involvement activities must take in to account the variation in the desire for involvement and the implications that this has for equity. More work is needed to understand the relationship between the desire to be involved and actually being involved, but both appear related to judgements of the impact of involvement on health care decisions.

Attitudes towards wolf policy are likely to be driven by perceived differences in political power between urban and rural groups. Using Swedish survey data collected in 2014 and structural equation modeling, I evaluated the effects of political alienation. Political alienation mediated the effect of having an urban or rural place of residence on attitudes towards wolf policy. Politically alienated individuals also preferred more extreme policy options than other respondents, while being less likely to approve of the current wolf policy in Sweden. These findings suggest that political alienation drives attitude polarization in wolf related social conflicts. Awareness of these underlying power asymmetries could possibly increase both policy legitimacy and management efficiency. This highlights the importance of accounting for social context in relation to policy-making and conservation efforts related to wolves.

Debates over wolf policy are driven by an underlying attitudinal divide between people from urban and rural areas. This study explores how the power relationship between urban and rural groups interact with individual attitude formation in relation to wolf policy, in order to understand why dissatisfaction with wolf policy tends to result in group level conflict patterns. Using Swedish survey data, I analyze attitudes to wolf policy, in relation to collective level effects and rural political alienation. Findings indicate that individual level attitudes towards the Swedish wolf policy are in part determined by collective attitude patterns: effects that could be contingent on political alienation. This highlights the possibility of reducing attitude polarization with respect to the wolf policy, by addressing political alienation among the rural population.

Understanding the benefits provided by restoring overstocked forests is crucial to guiding the choice of management actions, policy initiatives, and investments by beneficiaries, that is, monetizing ecosystem services. Using stakeholder‐based fuzzy cognitive mapping, collected through workshops with natural‐resource professionals, we mapped the interactions of ecosystem services and the perceived effects of management actions on them. In line with current concerns in the California study area, we found that fire protection was perceived as central (i.e., having a high degree of congruence with other ecosystem services) with improved fire protection providing important secondary effects on other ecosystem services, notably air‐quality protection, provision of habitat, and carbon storage. Forest restoration involves multiple fuels‐reduction actions, which were perceived as benefiting fire protection, with subsets also offering strong benefits to other ecosystem services. Prescribed burning, defensible‐space creation, understory thinning, and replanting showed particularly large differences in effects when accounting for interactions of ecosystem services. Resource managers and other nonmanager professionals prioritized similar ecosystem services, with the second group placing more importance on interactions between different ecosystem services. Ecosystem‐service valuation that includes interactions offers a salient, credible, and legitimate approach to inform multi‐benefit forest management, particularly where partnerships must monetize some of those benefits to finance critical landscape restoration.

Aim: ‘Participation and influence in society’ is the first of 11 objective domains in Swedish public health policy. The aim of this article is to investigate the views of the Swedish general population on the impact of a range of health participation activities, and whether these views were associated with sociodemographic characteristics. Methods: The study utilizes a national representative survey of the Swedish population, aged 15 years and over (n = 1500). Results: Apart from voting in regional elections – which most of the respondents believed to be an influential way to make improvements in healthcare (74%) – respondents believed more in individual patient activities than activities associated with adopting a citizen role and acting collectively. A majority of respondents believed in the impact of replying to patient surveys (67%), making a complaint (61%), talking directly to staff (58%) or changing their healthcare provider (54%). Fewer believed in the impact of joining a patient organization (46%), taking part in a citizen council (35%) or joining a political party (34%). Beliefs in impact increased with educational attainment and decreased with age. Conclusions: The results suggest people have more confidence in the impact of participating as individual patients rather than collectively and as citizens. To ensure that activities enable ‘participation and influence in society’, complementary opportunities for collective involvement that also take into account under-represented voices such as those with a low level of education need to be developed.