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

本研究旨在推进公众参与环境和风险政策决策的理论理解，这些政策是有争议的和非常规的。公众参与的理论已经从管理科学、决策理论、政治科学、哲学、传播学和小群体心理学中产生。国家研究理事会委员会最近关于风险定性的报告提出了公众参与的想法，认为这是分析和审议的迭代、非线性组合。然而，尽管有这些理论的发展和明智的实践者的反思，有很少的系统研究公众参与的过程。我们所需要的是一种理论，它能够全面把握对理解公众参与至关重要的原则，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的知识。公众参与理论还需要理解历史和社会背景或相关人员的特征如何影响绩效。同样的参与模式（例如公民陪审团）在两种不同的社会环境中可能不会产生同样的结果。某些实践者手册提示规划者应该注意哪些背景特征，但没有理论充分解释背景如何重要。本研究进行了系统的比较公众参与过程中的三个不同的政策问题舞台：森林决策，流域规划，辐射健康影响的保护。对于每一个竞技场，研究人员将调查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有着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。Q方法是一种揭示关于一个主题的预先存在的社会话语的存在的方法。研究人员还将对案例研究进行二阶Q分析，以探讨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。分析将涉及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背景特征，个人特征和对良好过程的信念之间的关系。研究结果将使公众参与理论的进展和未来研究的假设的产生。这种理论将有助于公众参与过程的规划者和组织者，从而改善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.