Abstract
AbstractStakeholder mental model elicitation can produce valuable insights into perceptions of complex systems such as ecosystems, economies, or the climate. These mental models can uncover crucial differences in perceptions between stakeholders and prevalent misunderstandings of the system, which can ultimately contribute to successful resource management. This paper introduces a novel tool to capture mental models: M‐Tool. M‐Tool was designed to be user‐friendly for diverse samples, and standardized to ease aggregation and comparison of mental models. With this tool, participants create influence diagrams with a fixed set of pictograms representing the system variables, and weighted arrows to display their relations. M‐Tool can be used to identify differences or changes in mental models or to co‐produce knowledge with stakeholders and develop strategies to address challenges within the system. This paper describes how to tailor the tool to a research project and discusses how M‐Tool may be suitable for diverse research applications. © 2021 The Authors. System Dynamics Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of System Dynamics Society.
Highlights
Mental models are internal representations of an external system, which consists of causal beliefs about the functioning of a system (Bostrom, 2017)
Mental models provide rich insights into a system based on observation and experience (Forrester, 1992), and eliciting stakeholders’ mental models increases the understanding of a system (Doyle & Ford, 1998)
This paper provides a short introduction to M-Tool and guides researchers to tailor the tool to their research question
Summary
Mental models are internal representations of an external system, which consists of causal beliefs about the functioning of a system (Bostrom, 2017). Current influence diagram drawing software available to map mental models includes the Mental Modeller, in which participants generate the system variables and connect these with weighted arrows (Gray et al, 2013), and eCASS in which different types of system variables are entered by the respondents and linked with unweighted arrows (Kovacs et al, 2017). M-Tool may be valuable for researchers interested in comparing mental models across diverse samples, including those with low literacy.
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