Understanding the role of stakeholder preferences in extraction system selection: insights from a decision support system applied across Mediterranean forests

Extraction system selection is a key component of sustainable forest operations, as it directly affects productivity, environmental impact, and worker safety. While geographic information system (GIS)-based decision support systems (DSSs) have improved the transparency and consistency of extraction system selection, less is known about how stakeholder preferences affect DSS outputs. This study investigates how stakeholder-specific preferences influence extraction system allocation within a GIS-based DSS applied across three Mediterranean forest areas in central and southern Italy. The DSS uses six criteria: terrain slope, roughness, extraction distance, road density, soil bearing capacity, and timber amount. It was applied repeatedly with analytic hierarchy process weights from four stakeholder groups: researchers, forest owners, technicians, and forest workers. Differences in system allocation were analysed using Stuart–Maxwell tests and agreement statistics, while generalized linear mixed models were applied to assess the influence of stakeholder role and operational constraints. Variance partitioning was used to quantify the relative contribution of stakeholder identity and spatial factors to decision variability. Extraction system allocation differed significantly among stakeholder groups, with operational stakeholders being more likely to select ground-based systems (odds ratio = 3.18, P < .001). However, variance partitioning revealed that most of the variability in system selection was explained by parcel-level (53.9%) and study-area (44.0%) factors, whereas stakeholder identity accounted for only 2.2% of the total variance. No significant relationship was found between operational constraints and stakeholder agreement (P = .715), suggesting that, within the adopted DSS framework, increasing operational difficulty was not associated with a clear convergence among stakeholder groups. Spatial analysis showed that stakeholder disagreement was concentrated in areas where multiple extraction systems exhibited comparable suitability. These findings suggest that extraction system selection is primarily driven by environmental and logistical constraints, with stakeholder preferences playing a secondary role. GIS-based DSS can therefore provide robust and consistent recommendations, while stakeholder-specific analyses remain valuable for identifying areas of uncertainty and supporting participatory decision-making. The results contribute to a better understanding of the interaction between objective constraints and subjective preferences in forest operations planning.