Multistage sampling procedure was used to select households.
The study district is divided into five forest divisions for forest
administration. As hills impose a set of constraints and
opportunities that differ from foothills, Joginder Nagar and
Suket Forest Divisions were purposely selected in the study
district of the province as these contained both hills and
foothills. The villages were categorised into hill and foothill
categories. Each of these categories was further stratified into:
JFM villages (villages where Joint Forest Management programme
is operational) and non-JFM villages. Two villages
from each stratum for hill and foothill villages were chosen in
each selected forest division using simple random sampling
with replacement method. In this way, 16 villages were
selected in total. Households in each selected village were
categorised into: small (