groups and other organizations fundamentally motivated to protect
homes, property and other assets from loss to wildfire. We also
classified organizations by their primary geographic focus: central
Oregon (CO), the northern portion of the ecoregion, which includes
Deschutes, Jefferson and Wasco Counties; south central Oregon
(SCO), the southern portion of the ecoregion, which includes Klamath
and Lake Counties; and the area that includes both central
and south central Oregon (COSCO), i.e., the entire ecoregion. We
were unable to classify some organizations for which we did not
interview representatives by their primary goals and geographic
focus. We treated these organizations as missing data and did not
include them in the analysis.
2.3. Data analysis
We used social network analysis
to quantify the composition and distribution of ties among organizations.
We limited our analysis to the sets of organizations
that reported interacting for the purpose of (1) planning, funding,
or implementing work and (2) obtaining information or expertisesince cooperation
and resource-seeking are two primary types of interactions among
organizations. For each of these two networks we divided the organizations
into separate groups, or subnetworks, according to their
goals and geographic focus. We compared the size and average indegree of the subnetworks to each other and tothe full network. We used average indegree as an indicator of bonding
social capital a denser, more interactive
community has greater potential for communication and coordination
and thus, the production of bonding social capital . We used indegree instead of outdegree to
control for potential bias caused by interviewees who were able to
recall large numbers of contacts.