Getting a grip on negotiation processes: Addressing trade-offs in mountain biking in Austria, Germany and Switzerland

Space for recreation is an important service provided by forests close to urban and rural areas alike. Mountain biking, as one recreational activity, is increasingly becoming widespread, which can lead to challenging trade-off situations, as some benefits from forests come at the cost of another forest benefit and vice versa. For instance, illegally constructed mountain bike trails lead to trade-offs between environmental protection and other forest utilizations such as wood production. We thus study how such trade-off situations can be negotiated to find an outcome, such as a legal mountain bike trail, which is accepted by stakeholders. In doing so, we select case studies where we expect to find similar trade-off situations that lead to the negotiation process about mountain bike trails. Specifically, we analyse the cases' negotiation processes (action situations) by applying Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and Development Framework. Our findings show the importance of collective actors, a clear delineation of responsibilities and of compensation and funding measures as well as structured workshops and collective site inspections for addressing trade-offs and for arriving at acceptable outcomes in our cases. •Widespread mountain biking leads to trade-offs between the interests of different stakeholders.•Negotiation processes are key to understand and address these trade-offs•Collective actors (organized bikers) are pivotal in addressing trade-offs.•A clear delineation of responsibilities, of compensation and funding measures is crucial to address trade-offs.