The Stakeholder Preference and Planning Tool can be used as a supporting tool in order to guide stakeholder discussion systematically and keep them thematically focused. It allows to assess stakeholder preferences for future development of specific management options or scenarios. For this, the relative importance of pre-defined parameters or success criteria are assessed in a facilitated stakeholder discussion.

Within Coastal Management and SAF the Stakeholder Preference and Planning Tool can be applied to:

• Raise awareness about sustainability and assess stakeholder preferences for future development of an area
• Enable thematically focused stakeholder discussion and guide them systematically
• Generate a common understanding of an issue and/or potential management options
• Identify concrete success criteria that should be achieved after the implementation of a final measure
• Assess if stakeholder preferences change over time (if applied repeatedly)
• Evaluate different management options based on stakeholder preferences

In the first step, stakeholders are asked to identify success criteria that should be fulfilled when a management option has been implemented. In a second step, these success criteria are inserted into a matrix and pairwise comparisons are made between any two criteria. For each comparison a score is given on a scale from 1/7 to 7. The score 1/5 indicates that the criterion on the Y-axis is less important than the criterion on the X-axis. The score 5 indicates that criterion on the Y-axis is more important than the criterion on the Y-axis. The scores 1/7 and 7 indicate “much” and the scores 1/3 and 3 “slightly” higher or lower importance. The score 1 indicates that both criteria are equally important.

After all comparisons have been made and a consensus score has been entered for each comparison, a relative importance (weight) is automatically calculated for each criterion.

Furthermore, the perceived suitability of different management options can be assessed with the Stakeholder Preference and Planning Tool. For this, all options are compared within the matrix and scored according to their suitability to fulfil each success criterion.

The tool is easily applicable for non-experts and can be adjusted to other needs (e.g. ranking issues, assessing conflicts). Furthermore, it can be used as a basis to develop concrete indicators to assess the success of a measure (see section 4.5 Indicator-based Sustainability Assessment Tool).