Abstract
Collaborative governance processes involving diverse stakeholders with conflicting beliefs are sometimes used to solve difficult environmental and natural resource policy issues. This thesis explores the factors and conditions that affect general learning and belief change in such settings. I use interview and survey data from nine U.S. marine aquaculture collaborative institutions to develop two regression models, one ordinary least squares and one binary logistic. The dual model approach allows me to explore if the factors that affect general learning are the same factors that affect belief change. This analysis illustrates there are several factors with significant influence on general learning that can be influenced by the convening agency (perceptions of group trust, perceptions of effective facilitation, and the inclusion of aquaculture critics). Perhaps less encouraging to conveners, this analysis also demonstrates that the factors that affect general learning are not necessarily the same factors that affect belief change. Signifying their importance, only the perception of a policy stalemate and perception of effective facilitation had significant and strong influence across both learning and belief change.