activities and decision-making processes (Agarwal, 2001; Baland and
Platteau, 1996; Jumbe and Angelsen, 2006). Fewstudies exist on participatory
forestmanagement in Bhutan and none of the studies has examined
the determinants of household participation in community forest
management or assesses the impacts of participatory community forest
management on income levels and livelihoods. Two fundamental research
questions are being asked in this study: (1)Who are the households
in the community who are more likely to participate in the
community forest management program; and (2) has the community
forest management program in Bhutan helped improve the income
levels and reduce the poverty of participant households? In addition,
is the community forestry programhelpful in securing the rural household
food security? Globally, only a few studies have considered the
overall average differences between participants and non-participants
of the participatory community forest management program without
accounting for potential confounding pre-participatory community forest
management differences. The objectives of the present study are to
identify and analyze the factors influencing household participation in
the community forestmanagement program; and to analyze the impact
of community forestmanagement on income and poverty levels of participant
households in Bhutan. The rest of the paper is structured in five
sections. Section 2 presents the conceptual framework in which a detailed
discussion on methods adopted to examine factors influencing
household participation and assess the effects of community forest
management between participant and non-participant households are
presented. In Section 3 background on the community forestry of
Bhutan is presented, Section 4 explains the data and a description of variables.
In Section 5 results and discussion are presented. Conclusion and
policy implications are provided in Section 6.