Value profiles as tools to understand and guide societal decision making

Abstract

Climate change is the largest global health threat. To protect human welfare locally and globally, municipalities need to take bold actions. However, even in situations with support for ambitious targets, the complexity and conflicting interest in details severely hinder green transition.We combined open policy practice and other decision support methods into a framework that allows for citizen participation and systematic, public description and evaluation of participants’ factual and value basis of their priorities. The similarities and differences of thought are explicated. Particular information objects are used for actions, outcomes, hypotheses, priorities and value profiles.In this proof of concept, we analysed priorities and arguments about climate change from a voting advice application for the Finnish Parliamentary election in 2023. The content was described on the web platform Kausal Watch as it had many of the functionalities that would be needed for the full-blown implementation of the framework.The information objects described fairly well the respondents’ mental models. The approach clarified the nature of disagreements, as some were due to values and some factual beliefs. The framework seems to be able to describe this information in such a structured way that enables further scrutiny and co-development of policies.