Procedural fairness, personal benefits, agency expertise, and planning participants' support for the forest service

Numerous appeals of Forest Plans have been interpreted as a lack of support for the Forest Service. Questionnaire responses from 455 Forest Plan parti cipants show that agency support was more strongly related to perceptions o f procedural fairness and personal benefits than to agency expertise expres sed as information about resources and human needs. These responses suggest that agency support will be most sensitive to changing perceptions of proc edures from somewhat unfair to somewhat fair, and preventing reductions in personal benefits. Furthermore, perceptions of fair procedures were half as frequent when benefits were expected to decline than when they were expect ed to either increase or not change.