Similar to many coastal communities, a recent vulnerability assessment by the New Hampshire (NH) Rockingham Planning Commission found the Town of Seabrook in need of restoring dune systems to protect the community from increased storm surges. Disputes among stakeholders, including issues such as private beach access over town-owned dunes, flood protection, dune restoration, beach renourishment, and piping plover protection, impede beach management planning. A past effort to develop a management plan with little community input has gone nowhere.

A collaborative process can be an effective alternative to the contentious coastal management decision-making that currently characterizes Seabrook. This interest-based approach depends on stakeholder recognition of their interdependence in working together to understand a coupled social-ecological problem and develop a strategy to address it. At the same time, stakeholders care about a wide range of issues and have diverse interests and values. They are often unaware of how interconnected are social and ecological issues, how reliant they are on others to achieve their goals, and the opportunities to collaborate with others with whom they have little in common.

This research analyzes the impact of conducting a stakeholder assessment on stakeholders’ perceptions of their interdependence. The results are based on qualitative analysis of surveys administered before and after the interviews that occur as part of the stakeholder assessment in Seabrook, NH, participant observation, and document analysis. The survey asks stakeholders about their understanding of the dune management system, their priority issues and interests, and their relationships to other key stakeholders. 

Based on interviews with dispute resolution experts and literature review, anticipated stakeholder assessment impacts include stakeholders identifying a richer set of dune management issues and interconnections between them, a greater appreciation of who are other key stakeholders and how other stakeholders affect their ability to achieve desired outcomes, and a reframing of their own interests in relationship to other stakeholders and issues.