SDEST: Toward A Better Theory of Public Participation in Environmental Decision-Making

本研究旨在促进对公众参与有争议和非常规的环境和风险政策决策的理论理解。关于公众参与的理论从管理学、决策理论、政治学、哲学、传播学和小团体心理学中涌现出来。美国国家研究委员会（National Research Council）最近发布的一份关于风险特征的报告，提出了公众参与是分析与审议的一种反复、非线性结合的理念。然而，尽管有了这些理论发展和明智的实践者反思，对公众参与过程的系统研究却很少。我们需要的是一种理论，它能捕捉到对理解公众参与至关重要的所有原则，并整合来自这些不同学科和不同分析单位的见解。该项目的一个关键假设是，研究还必须利用实际参与公共参与过程的人们的知识。公众参与理论还需要了解历史和社会背景或参与人员的特征如何影响绩效。同样的参与模式（如公民陪审团）在两种不同的社会环境中可能不会产生相同的结果。某些针对从业者的手册会提示规划者应该注意哪些背景特征，但没有理论能充分解释背景的重要性。本研究系统比较了三个不同政策议题领域的公众参与过程：森林决策、流域规划和辐射健康效应保护。对于每个领域，研究人员将询问参与者对公众参与过程中什么是重要的想法。通过选择对这一过程持截然不同观点的个人，他们将收集到公众参与理论应该包含的广泛原则。为了理解这些不同的观点，他们将使用深度访谈方法和Q方法相结合的方法。Q方法论是一种揭示关于一个话题的预先存在的社会话语存在的方法。研究人员还将在案例研究中进行二阶Q分析，以探索是否存在独立于政策场所特征的关于良好公众参与过程的稳定话语。分析将包括比较政策领域内和政策领域之间的结果。访谈将主要用于探索政策问题的上下文特征、个人特征和对良好过程的信念之间的关系。研究结果将促进公众参与理论的发展，并为今后的研究提供假设。这种理论将对公众参与过程的规划者和组织者有用，从而可以改进有关环境和风险问题的决策。

This research proposes to advance theoretical understanding of public participation in decision-making about environmental and risk policies that are contentious and non-routine. Theories on public participation have emerged out of management sciences, decision theory, political science, philosophy, communication studies, and small group psychology. A recent National Research Council committee report on risk characterization advanced the idea of public participation as an iterative, non-linear combination of analysis and deliberation. However, despite these theoretical developments and wise practitioner reflections, there is little systematic research on public participation processes. What is needed is theory that captures the full breadth of principles that are important to understanding public participation and integrates insights from these different disciplines and different units of analysis. One key assumption of this project is that research must also tap the knowledge of people who actually take part in public participation processes. Theory of public participation also needs to understand how the historical and social context or the characteristics of the people involved can influence performance. The same participation model (e.g. citizen juries) may not yield the same outcomes in two different social settings. Certain handbooks for practitioners give hints as to what context features planners should pay attention to, but there is no theory that adequately explains how context matters. This research undertakes a systematic comparison of public participation processes in three different policy issue arenas: forest policy-making, watershed planning, and radiation health effects protection. For each arena researchers will inquire into participants' ideas of what matters in a public participation process. By selecting individuals with vastly different points of view about the process, they will gather a wide breath of principles that theory of public participation should incorporate. To make sense of these different points of view, they will use a combination of in-depth interview methods and Q methodology. Q methodology is a way of revealing the presence of pre-existing social discourses about a topic. The researchers will also conduct a second order Q analysis across the case studies to explore whether there are stable discourses about good public participation process that are independent of characteristics of the policy venue. The analysis will involve comparing results within and between policy arenas. The interviews will be used primarily to explore the relationships between contextual features of a policy issue, personal characteristics, and beliefs about good process. Results will enable progress on theory of public participation and generation of hypotheses for future research. Such theory will be useful to planners and organizers of public participation processes and can thereby lead to improved decisions about environmental and risk issues.