Public Participation and the Environment:  Do We Know What Works?

Abstract

This literature review of studies on public meetings, workshops, and community advisory committees discusses public participation based on empirical evidence. Public participation "success" is defined by researchers' criteria that are divided into two categories: (1) those that evaluate the success of the participatory process and (2) those that evaluate the success of the outcome of the process. We find the form of participationspublic meetings, workshops, or citizen advisory committeessdoes not determine process or outcome success. Therefore, attempts to develop a typology of public participation efforts may be problematic. However, we find some empirical support for practitioners' other widely accepted "rules of thumb"."The common practice of eliciting comments only after most of the work of reaching a decision has been done is cause for resentment of risk decisions.... Many decisions can be better informed and their information base can be more credible if the interested and affected parties are appropriately and effectively involved..." (1)."Experience increasingly shows that risk management decisions that are made in collaboration with stakeholders are more effective and more durable." (2).Two major national reports have called for more involvement of outside stakeholders in agency decision making about risk (1, 2). Despite fears of some scientists that participatory processes can swamp good science, these reports encourage agencies to take collaborative approaches to environmental problem solving. The following review of public participation studies seeks to ground discussions of implementation of public participation in empirical evidence, dating back to the 1970s when seminal research was spurred by the enactment of federal environmental statutes that mandated public participation.

Understanding the factors that make public participation effective in health policy and planning: a realist synthesis

“…To address this, recent authors have developed several frameworks to evaluate public participation effectiveness (e.g. Chess and Purcell 1999;Rowe and Frewer 2000;Stephens and Berner 2011).…”

Governance, accountability and neighbourhood policing in Northern Ireland: analysing the role of public meetings

“…3 The official PACT guidance documents [34,37] 4 that are disseminated to PSNI officers identify the PACT model as the 'minimum expected standard means of community engagement' for the PSNI. In this sense, PACT is promoted as 'neighbourhood focused' and 'neighbourhood owned' [37; 1], and as providing a mechanism that 'give[s] focus for identifying community concerns', thus 'encouraging communities and neighbourhoods to identify and solve problems alongside the PSNI ' [36; 12].…”

Evaluating the Quality of Structured Environmental Management Decisions

“…In the end, however, the overall quality of environmental decisions should also be judged by both process (i.e., the steps in a structured, decision aiding approach) and outcomeoriented (i.e., decision makers' ability to utilize these steps effectively) attributes (35). We believe, therefore, that the disagreement observed in this study between decision makers' self-reported evaluations and their actual choice behavior, as well as the implications of this finding for the design of future environmental decision making efforts should not be ignored.…”