Current guidelines for forest management ask for multi-functional management schemes, allowing a balance between different forest functions, such as production, protection, recreation and ecology. This requires adoption of multi-criteria processes for forest planning. In such a framework, involving stakeholders from the very beginning of the process might be an additional benefit: it would allow to identify possible broadly accepted forest management strategies, thus facilitating their implementation. In this paper, we present the methodologies and tools we developed between 2013 and 2016, in a process aimed at designing and assessing management scenarios for the chestnut belt forests in the Canton of Ticino (Switzerland). Structured and transparent comparison among the scenarios allowed around twenty representatives of cantonal offices and interest groups to make rational and informed choices, leading to the identification of two low-conflict, compromise management scenarios to be implemented in the near future.