[DSRP Evidence](https://dsrpevidence.org/)

# A systems thinking approach for eliciting mental models from visual boundary objects in hydropolitical contexts: a case study from the Pilcomayo River Basin

## Details

**Authors** Riveraine S. Walters; Erin S. Kenzie; Alexander E. Metzger; William Jesse Baltutis; Kakali B. Chakrabarti; Shana Lee Hirsch; Bethany K. Laursen

**Year** 2019

**Publisher** Ecology and Society

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Environment & Sustainability

**Secondary disciplines** Public Policy

**Reading level** technical

**Kind of engagement** scholarly

[Read it at the publisher](https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-10586-240209) 
10.5751/ES-10586-240209

## In authors' words

### Abstract

“Transboundary collaborations related to international freshwater are critical for ensuring equitable, efficient, and sustainable shared access to our planet’s most fundamental resources. Visual artifacts, such as knowledge maps, functioning as boundary objects, are used in hydropolitical contexts to convey understandings and facilitate discussion across scales about challenges and opportunities from multiple perspectives… To investigate and synthesize these multiple concepts, we developed a novel method of eliciting mental models from visual boundary objects in social-ecological contexts by combining content analysis with theoretical frameworks for boundary objects and systems thinking.”

### What they set out to do (purpose)

An exploratory methodological case study testing a new method for eliciting collective mental models from visual boundary objects in a transboundary water-governance setting. The researchers screened more than 1500 official Pilcomayo Basin documents and selected 26 knowledge-map-type visuals—problem/solution trees, conceptual models, causal mosaics, etc.—for DSRP-informed analysis.

### What they found (results)

The hybrid content/map analysis + DSRP method successfully elicited both individual and shared mental models from visual boundary objects. The authors explicitly conclude that adding Perspective was meaningful and enhanced understanding of the mental models, while Systems/part–whole structure added useful information but needed further methodological development.

## Commentary

### In short

Strong supportive application and methodological extension. The authors combine conventional content/map analysis with DSRP specifically because traditional approaches emphasize concepts and relationships but omit part–whole systems and perspectives. They then use all four DSRP categories to elicit and compare collective mental models from actual hydropolitical visual artifacts.

### In more detail

The authors analyzed 26 visual artifacts produced through institutional, stakeholder, and participatory processes in the Pilcomayo River Basin. They reorganized and compared the visuals according to distinct concepts, part–whole systems, relationships, and perspectives. D: they reduced the content to 17 broad concept categories. S: they examined explicit groupings indicated through boxes, colors, and other visual containment. P: they identified the main perspective of each knowledge map and inferred the external perspective of the stakeholder/institutional groups that produced it. R: they coded directed cause–effect, causal, and actor–result relationships across the 26 visuals.

### Response

The authors reached for DSRP because content and map analysis capture concepts and relationships but drop part-whole structure and perspective, and they report that adding Perspective meaningfully improved what they could see in the mental models. An independent group finding two of the four patterns missing from their existing method and getting something back by adding them.

**Patterns it shows** D, S, R, P

Shows it makes a difference

**Added** 2026-09-01

**How to cite this** Riveraine S. Walters; Erin S. Kenzie; Alexander E. Metzger; William Jesse Baltutis; Kakali B. Chakrabarti; Shana Lee Hirsch; Bethany K. Laursen (2019). A systems thinking approach for eliciting mental models from visual boundary objects in hydropolitical contexts: a case study from the Pilcomayo River Basin. Ecology and Society.