Abstract
Community participation for forest sustainability and use of forest resources for community development is considered a vital way in all societies. This study was conducted to assess the public views toward sustainable forest management in the area of Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, through collecting data from 255 respondents. Views about forest management techniques at different levels were discussed. Three main areas of focus to manage forest resources were: strategic-level management, local-level management, and communication-level management. To provide confidence and to measure factors affecting sustainable forest management, this study applied the structural equation modeling approach and built a model that explained and identified the critical factors affecting sustainable forest management. A quantitative approach via Smart Partial Least Squares version 3.2.8 was used for analysis. The findings of the study show that the R-2 value of the model was 0.653, which means that the three exogenous latent constructs collectively explained 65.3% of the variance in sustainable forest management. In this study, the goodness of fit of the model was 0.431, which is considered valid for further analysis. Among the three proposed levels for forest management, the strategic-level-management factor was found the most important of the three variables. This study concluded that for better and sustainable forest management, policies should flow from the strategic level to the local and also focus on communication-level management because all these factors appear to be significant in measuring sustainable forest management. Community engagement and awareness are also found to be an important way for forest resource management.