How do we study resilience? A systematic review

LE POLAIN DE WAROUX, YANN; MARIE-CLAUDE CARIGNAN; OLIVIA DEL GIORGIO; LEANDRO DÍAZ; ENRICO LUCAS; JAUREGUIBERRY, PEDRO; LIPOMA MARIA LUCRECIA; MAZZINI, FLAVIA; DÍAZ SANDRA

People and Nature

John Wiley and Sons Inc

Año: 2024 vol. 6 p. 474 - 489

The concept of resilience has gained immense popularity as a way to frame socialand environmental challenges. However, its empirical operationalization and theintegration of social and ecological dimensions continue to present difficulties.In this paper, we conduct a systematic review of existing empirical studies of resiliencein social, ecological and social-ecologicalsystems (SESs) and examine howand to what extent these studies have achieved the operationalization of the conceptof resilience.We evaluate the operationalization of resilience in 463 papers based on whetherthey define the system of interest and disturbances, whether they define resilience,whether they evaluate resilience, and for papers focusing on SESs, whetherthat evaluation integrates social and ecological dimensions.We find that 51% of empirical studies do not meet at least one of these operationalizationcriteria, and that even those that do often lack key features for effectiveoperationalization, such as clear system boundaries and baseline state or an effectiveintegration of social and ecological dimensions. Of the papers examiningSESs and evaluating resilience, only 54% integrate social and ecological dimensionsin that evaluation.Building on these findings, we propose some design guidelines for operationalizingfuture empirical studies of resilience.