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Many contemporary social and ecological challenges in forested ecosystems (climate change, invasive species, wildland-urban interface development, and wildfires) span multiple jurisdictions and are characterized by complex patterns of social and ecological interdependencies. Increasing evidence suggests that interdependent risk can best be addressed by working across boundaries (jurisdictional, scalar, and expertise) by sharing information and cooperating in management activities. Polycentric governance has emerged as a framework to understand how multiple and overlapping centers of decision-making authority establish and maintain governance connectivity to solve collective action problems and interdependent risks. Previous studies have examined the collaborative and interorganizational process of polycentric landscape governance, yet most studies rely on qualitative case study data or descriptively employ social network analysis. Understanding the values, beliefs, and motivations of actors (land managers, landowners, researchers, policymakers, and non-governmental organizations) for cooperating is important for improving polycentric governance design, implementation, and operation. How the context and characteristics of social-ecological systems shape polycentric governance remains largely unexplored. On the basis of research in the Sequoia-Kings Canyon Protected Area-Centered Ecosystem, we address this gap by utilizing exponential random graph modeling to analyze the social and ecological drivers of polycentric wildfire governance. This research highlights that even in situations of high stakes (increasing occurrences of high-severity wildfires that escape suppression) actors will collaborate only if the gains from collaboration outweigh the costs. If jurisdictions or other organizations are thought to have low operational capacity or lack useful information, even with a high probability of large wildfire, the actor-to-actor connections are less likely for effective polycentric governance. Our results highlight previously undiscussed mechanisms of network formation in wildfire hazard governance, and we discuss the broader applicability for forest landscape challenges and for polycentric governance design and assessment in other social-ecological contexts.

Environmental governance is complex because it addresses challenges anchored in different sectors and concerns multiple interdependent issues. Managing those complex interdependencies through collaboration is vital for efficient long-term environmental governance. However, because interdependencies between environmental issues are challenging to unravel and vastly complex, it is challenging for actors to account for them when deciding with whom to collaborate. I use the concept of social-ecological networks to study interdependencies among actors and environmental issues and ask how the quality of actor-issue interdependencies influences collaboration patterns. Based on the actor-issue network, I account for interdependencies based on three distinct qualities of actor-issue paths, i.e., (i) length of actor-issue paths: how closely actors are connected by environmental issues, (ii) multiplexity of actor-issue paths: if actors have multiple parallel paths connecting them through environmental issues, and (iii) similarity of actor-issue paths: whether actors’ environmental impact is similar to one of their potential collaboration partners. Using exponential random graph models and data on eight Swiss wetlands, a qualitative meta-regression analysis of the results reveals that the three qualities of actor-issue interdependencies influence collaboration patterns between actors. Whether the impact of actor-issue interdependencies on the probability of collaboration ties is positive or negative largely depends on the complexity of the governance situations. Only in situations with homogeneous case areas and under the absence of borders (low network exogenous governance complexity) as well as in the presence of many actors do the length, multiplexity, and similarity of actor-issue interdependencies have a clear, positive impact on the formation of collaboration ties. Although the comparative setting helps identify specific governance settings where the hypotheses are supported, it also reveals the importance of multi-case studies to compare contextual differences between cases.