Stakeholder Engagement in Socio-Environmental Systems Research: A Review of Practices and Pathways to Purposeful Integration

Environmental change is complex. It unfolds through the interaction of people, institutions, and ecosystems, making it difficult to separate social and ecological processes. Systems approaches help organize this complexity, and participatory research extends these approaches by including the people who understand the system from perspectives not captured in expert models or existing data. This review examines how participation is practiced and reported in socio-environmental systems research. We analyzed 194 studies to understand who participates, when engagement occurs, and how it is facilitated. Most involved government and industry actors, relied on one primary method such as interviews or workshops, and concentrated participation in early stages of research. Few continued to engage participants through model testing, analysis, or application, and many offered limited detail about how participation was designed or documented. These gaps make it difficult to compare studies or build cumulative understanding of how participatory processes influence modeling outputs. To address this, we introduce the Purpose / Approach Matrix, a framework for connecting study goals with the design and reporting of stakeholder engagement. The matrix supports transparent, context-specific participatory research that aligns modeling practice with the changing realities of human and environmental systems.