Abstract
Community participation in collective management of environmental and natural resources is increasingly of interest among the sustainable development circles and scholarly discourse. There is theoretical consensus that sustainable management of natural resources is highly reliant on effective local community participation. In practice, however, realizing broad and active participation of local communities in a manner that is economically, socially and ecologically sustainable remains inconsistent. While extensive case study research has examined the dynamics of community participation aimed at understanding the enabling factors, there remains a notable gap in systematic analyses that synthesize recurring themes across these studies. In this research, we draw on the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework as an organizing theoretical framework, to review the empirical literature on collective management of common-pool natural resources in sub-Saharan Africa, in order to collate knowledge for a clearer understanding of the underlying determinants of community participation. The findings show that: the factors influencing community participation are complex, multidimensional and intersecting; different natural resources offer different combinations of ecological, economic, and social incentives that condition perceptions of benefits and costs that drive community participation; local communities are not homogenous, and the preferences and responses of individual members depend on their distinct identities and social settings; and sound local governance is the cornerstone of community participation. These insights result in specific, locally relevant policy directions for effective community participation.