AN APPLICATION OF SOCIAL CHOICE THEORY TO USDA-FOREST-SERVICE DECISION-MAKING

To meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1 969, the U.S.D.A. Forest Service has changed the way forest plans are developed. The focus of this paper is to address the group-decision pr oblem using social choice theory, specifically the voting models of Co ndorcet and Borda. The elements of a social choice problem are voters, alternatives, preferences, and aggregation. A case study from the Sho shone National Forest is used to demonstrate the use of the voting mod els from social choice theory. The solutions derived from the analysis are strategy and coalitional strategy proof implying that behaviors i ntended to influence the outcome, such as vote trading, would be unsuc cessful. (C) Society for Policy Modeling, 1996.