§Introduction
Should the public be in included in the decision making process in environmental risk management? If so, who should be included and what should be the extent of their involvement? I argue that a wide representative grouping of the public must be included for effective environmental management due to limitations in expert knowledge, disagreement among experts, the validity of lay perceptions, and the importance of including those directly impacted.
To maintain focus on the subject of this volume, this chapter is used to review literature specifically focusing on studies of participatory decision-making psychology most relevant to environmental policy settings. First I present some general findings from the psychometric paradigm, one of the primary tools that has been used to show the importance of public involvement. Next, I demonstrate research that specifically shows why expert opinion alone is not adequate. Following a review of the reasons for public involvement and a brief discussion of critiques, I present some of the current methodology for including the public in decision-making. I conclude with a summary of the reasons and methods for public involvement.
Finucane (2002) states that, “in general, by facilitating public participation in both risk assessment and risk management, decision processes become more democratic, the relevance and quality of technical analysis is improved, and the legitimacy and public acceptance of the resulting decisions is increased.” What is the evidence for this? To begin, it is helpful to have an understanding of some of the general benefits of groups for decision-making.
§Cognitive Errors and the Need for Group Decision Making
Prior to examining the need for public involvement, it is important to understand the function of a group in making good management decisions. Heath et al. (1998) provide many examples of individual cognitive shortcomings to show that individuals produce systematic errors that can and often are corrected by working with a group, which keeps decision making in check. Despite individual human shortcomings, humans working in groups have demonstrated remarkable capacity to do highly complex tasks, such as manned lunar flight.
Heath et al. (1998) discuss various repairs that organizations can make to individual cognitive errors. For example, individuals are generally overconfident in their judgments and estimates of their capabilities. An organization or larger group of people helps to limit these overconfident judgments by adhering to procedures and providing feedback between individuals. McDaniels et al. (1999: 498) point out that, “individuals naturally respond to complex tasks by using their judgmental instincts to find an easy or adequate way through the problem at hand. Individuals can’t create a wide variety of alternatives.”
Though there are potential problems that can happen in group decision making, such as “groupthink” in which a pattern of collective thinking can develop which might hinder the potential benefits of a group, inclusion of facilitators trained in such situations can eliminate these problems. For example, a facilitator who observes the manifestation of groupthink dynamics can help transform this situation into one of “teamthink” in which divergent views and open expression are encouraged, allowing each individual to add to the decision, thus facilitating the potential for a synergy in which the whole is greater than the parts (Matsumoto & Juang, 2004: 458).
As I later demonstrate, diverse stakeholder input for creating alternatives is necessary for effective policy decisions. Next I examine findings from the psychometric paradigm on expert and individual perceptions to point specifically to the validity of public involvement instead of just groups of experts.
§Findings From the Psychometric Paradigm
The psychometric paradigm has been an important tool for understanding the importance of public involvement in management of environmental risk. This technique is basically a tool for quantifying perceived risks and benefits through procedures such as factor analysis and multidimensional scaling. Using the psychometric paradigm to examine perceptions of risk, Slovic (1987) found that public perceptions of risks have a strong impact on how society chooses to manage hazards to humans.
Risks were found to load primarily on two factors: the degree a risk is known/observable and the amount of dread and individual control one has over the risk. Following analyses of the complex patterns displayed in his data, Slovic (1987) concluded that lay perceptions of risk are much richer and contain legitimate information not found in typical expert views. Experts typically base risk assessments primarily on the number of potential fatalities from a given risk and ignore the subtleties used by lay people. This work was an initial indicator that public perception is important for judgment and decision-making in environmental risk because it contains potentially important complexities not considered by experts.
Axelrod et al. (1999) applied these techniques to understand public perception of environmental issues and provided specific examples of the validity of public input. For example, lay people perceive a lack of control over natural hazards not directly caused by human intervention. As a result of this sense of lack of control, they may become more complacent and fail to respond to the seemingly uncontrollable situation. If key representatives of a community were included in the decision making process to plan for a potential natural disaster, a sense of greater control might be achieved resulting in more adequate preparations (Axelrod et al., 1999; McDaniels et al., 1995; McDaniels et al., 1997). Axelrod et al. (1999) conclude that understanding perceptions is important for establishing general practices for disseminating information and guiding environmental management.
§Shouldn’t We Just Leave This Up to the Experts?
Expert and lay perceptions of risk often differ; expert opinions are based almost entirely on expected annual mortality, while lay perceptions are based on a complex interplay of, “uncertainty, dread, catastrophic potential, controllability, equity, risk to future generations...” (Slovic, 1996). Because of this complex interplay, education through the recitation of risk statistics has little impact on lay perception. Slovic (1996) argues that, “...understanding these differences and recognizing the subjective nature of risk assessments, should encourage risk professionals to emphasize institutional, procedural and societal processes rather than quantitative risk assessments and to include interested, affected citizens as legitimate partners in decisions on risks.” The complex intuitive system of judgment used by the lay populace has legitimate value-laden concerns that are not addressed by raw mortality numbers and other statistics used by experts in risk and toxicology (Slovic, 1996).
Not only do expert and lay perceptions differ, expert judgments of risk can also differ from each other and are strongly influenced by opinion. Kraus et al. (1992) surveyed members of the society of toxicology and the lay public regarding beliefs in the toxicity of substances. Interestingly, prior judgments about other issues and affiliation with industry, academia, or government, strongly impacted on judgments of toxic risk. Toxicologists were found to have lower perceptions of risks for hazards than members of the general public. Whereas the experts believe that dose is very important for risk judgments, members of the public usually have zero tolerance for substances that they consider toxic.
Slovic et al. (1995) reproduced the study done by Kraus et al. (1992) with similar results in Canada, which indicates that, the discrepancy within expert groupings and between experts and the public is not just a U.S. phenomenon. Slovic et al. (1995) also elaborated on the fact that experts, like the public, had a lack of confidence in animal studies for predicting risks to human health. This is interesting because animal studies are often used for creation of dose response curves. Similarly to the public, toxicologists also had wide disagreement about basic scientific issues and appear to be strongly influenced by heuristic judgments. These studies point to limitations in risk assessment procedures and trusting that expert opinion alone is necessarily objective and capable of making ideal decisions.
§Arguments Against the Involvement of the Public
Though incorporating public perception of risk in decision making is a noble goal, risk analysts and decision makers are rightly concerned of the ability of different, relatively naive stakeholders, to step into such an obviously complex and involved process which must, by nature, involve uncertainty and value tradeoffs. Some risk managers might argue that such decision making is difficult even for those who have spent a lifetime of involvement and that naive groups and the public will just interfere and complicate the process further, reducing the ability to make effective or timely decisions (McDaniels et al., 1999).
Though there have clearly been successful examples of public involvement in decision-making, there are many contrary examples of failure and dissatisfaction. Gregory (2000: 35) states that despite increased public participation, there remains a, “widespread dissatisfaction with the quality and meaningfulness of stakeholder input to many environmental risk-management decisions.”
Another problem is how to achieve a representative grouping from the public. Though decision makers might like to include the public in the process, those included might not be representative because some might feel that they either don’t have time or would rather just let the experts decide despite the fact that the eventual outcome might be contrary to what their values would prefer (Macgregor, 1994). Despite these potential problems, as demonstrated by Mcdaniels et al. (1999), involvement of a representative grouping of the local public is important and possible and with trained facilitators, the impact of individual biases can be limited.
Following their exploration of critiques, McDaniels et al. (1999) present a successful example of the highly controversial management of an electrical generation facility in British Columbia where there was wide acceptance and agreement on the outcome from a process with strong public involvement. The characteristics that made this project particularly successful were deliberation until the representative group achieved consensus and consideration of relevant objectives and alternatives. Furthermore, the process used was a key element to the success of the project, in which a clear set of objectives were decided and written down, wide ranging alternatives were considered and modeled, and data collection and views of experts were all incorporated. This process helped to characterize the potential impacts of different alternatives in ways that were easily understood by the participants. McDaniels et al. (1999: 509) argue that risk management can, in fact, be made more democratic but caution the need for a clear structure that incorporates, “values, meaningful technical information, tradeoffs, and insight.”
Another problem is that presenting environmental health information to laypeople can cause confusion and outrage when there is uncertainty involved. This has implications for management involving the general populace because usually there will be uncertainty and so critics of diverse inclusion might stress that this indicates that the public should not be involved in the decision making process (Johnson and Slovic, 1998). In contrast to this, my contention is that if outrage or confusion is present due to uncertainty, this outrage and confusion may well diminish once the public is able to participate in shaping the process. Control creates responsibility and thus should diminish outrage, as the decision becomes partially the responsibility of the public.
One example of failure of risk management is evident in effort to establish a permanent repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Experts believe that technical problems can be overcome yet the process is at a standstill due to public discontent. This example is similar to other situations where a highly participatory environment was created and the process ground to a standstill. In inclusive decision-making, the risk communicators and experts must consider how information is framed, trust must be developed, and all potential negative consequences must be addressed.
Though examples such as Yucca Mountain abound, successful counter examples of waste facility employment with public acceptance are also evident and generally involve strong development of community trust (MacGregor, 1994). MacGregor (1994) argues for early involvement of the public so that their concerns can be included and addressed before plans have been set in an irreversible course. If the public is completely involved in the decision making process and feels content that they have been adequately heard, they will feel accountable for their role and thus likely work to achieve a solution acceptable to all parties.
§How should the public be included?
I have argued that the public should be strongly involved in decision-making but how should this involvement be enacted? There appears to be some disagreement in the literature regarding details but certain core components are regularly cited.
Wellman et al. (1997) demonstrate one method, multi-attribute utility analysis (MAUT) for examining stakeholder concerns for salmon restoration. MAUT is a tool used to, “elicit utility functions for each stakeholder group, and then use these to score various alternatives” (McDaniels et al., 1999: 501). Wellman et al. (1997) state that MAUT is useful because it has demonstrated effectiveness in decision making with conflicting objectives and for understanding value trade-offs in complex negotiations.
In the Wellman et al. (1997) study, this form of analyses was used to determine different stakeholder values for salmon resources in the Willapa Bay ecosystem. This watershed is currently experiencing increased demands due to growing usage as a vacation area for residents of Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. Fourteen groups of stakeholders, including fishers, environmentalists, timber interests, farmers, and other citizen groups were identified by analyzing the economic makeup and interacting with different people throughout the community. In this example, the MAUT helped to find where stakeholders agreed so that quantitative information regarding resource impact and development of the most comprehensive and least damaging alternative could be balanced with the needs of different stakeholders. Previous efforts at management had not worked because they were largely based on needs stated by ecologists while ignoring the priorities of other stakeholders (Wellman et al., 1997). Though MAUT analyses are useful for identifying common ground for creating ideal decisions, this approach requires a great deal of time and effort from all parties and thus might not always be practical. Though Heath et al. (1998) provide evidence for the possible function of a group to repair individual cognitive errors, McDaniels et al. (1999) point out the difficulties involved in group decision making which is unaided by structured processes. For example, groups often establish entrenched positions limiting possibilities for representative compromise and resulting in alienation of individuals with differing perspectives. Group decisions inclusive of public perception should consider how to describe social and individual objectives in defining decision tasks. McDaniels et al. (1999: 501) believe that the public should be explicitly involved but guided by experts in decision-making and policy through a clearly defined structure using these five steps:
What ends (objectives) are important to achieve in selecting a management alternative for the question at hand?
What alternatives can be constructed to achieve these objectives?
What information is needed to characterize the impacts of these alternatives, in terms of measures for the stated objectives?
What tradeoffs arise in selecting among the alternatives?
What alternatives can the participants support?
McDaniels et al. (1999) used these steps in the decision process for water management in an environment near an electrical generation facility. First they conducted interviews with informants to determine preliminary objectives for discussion. After fifteen meetings where they used the steps above, complete consensus on all major issues was reached by diverse group of stakeholders who remained happy with the decisions at least 1 year after the policies were enacted (McDaniels et al., 1999).
Public participation has increased on many fronts in environmental management and risk policy decision-making through opinion polls, focus groups, town-hall meetings, open houses, and advisory committees. Despite attempts at inclusive participation, often the decision makers simply make cursory efforts and then interpret the information by themselves, ultimately reducing the impact and consideration of expert scientific opinion and the discounting the needs of lay people in the community. Gregory (2000) believes that extensive involvement must be considered in an inclusive fashion to remain meaningful in meeting the needs of stakeholders. To meet these objectives, the risk decision-making process should include a forum for deliberation and devices for consideration of the technical analyses.
Unfortunately, so far there have been few demonstrations for how to best incorporate people at all levels of the decision making process. A structure needs to be developed for maintaining a discourse throughout the decision making process, which will incorporate the most current scientific knowledge while maintaining effective communication of the economic, social, and health needs of the local population. Furthermore, methods of incorporating relevant knowledge most appropriately are necessary for creating representative decision making processes.
In this vein, tools need to be developed that will adequately measure various attributes of stakeholder values and limit cognitive errors made either by individuals or unstructured groups (Gregory, 2000). The group facilitator should be aware and trained in helping a group to overcome cognitive shortcuts, overconfidence, framing effects, and other psychological traps that might impair decision making. As Gregory (2000: 37) states, “Public participation efforts routinely fail to give sufficient attention to developing the foundation for making a good decision.” Objectives should be clearly stated with known clear effects on measurement of value (Gregory, 2000).
Often in decision making with stakeholders, the different participants will focus solely on the objectives that they hold to be the most important, such as environmental preservation for environmentalists or continued employment for labor groups. This can ultimately result in the process breaking down and thus the facilitator should help people to understand that they should focus on the process and not prior biases in order to elicit representative decision-making. In structured decision-making, “rather than shifting the focus away from the divergent views of participants in favor of consensus, a structured decision making approach looks to the differences in expressed values and objectives as the source of valuable insights that can lead to a broadly acceptable agreement” (Gregory, 2000).
Gregory et al. (in press) are concerned that the recent attempts in the 1990s for inclusion of public have too strongly emphasized dispute resolution for achieving consensus among different stakeholders. Much of the current focus is based on “alternative dispute resolution” which is a method in which negotiations are made with different stakeholders to avoid prolonged court battles. Gregory et al. (in press) believe that using a simple consensus process is dangerous for creating any kind of meaningful decisions with diverse interest groups because any group can veto any single issue in the process; eventually, enough vetoes will lead to a plan of no plan as some group is likely to be opposed to any individual detail, thus effectively maintaining the status quo.
Gregory et al. (in press) advocate decision aiding where participants work to help participants, “identify their relevant values, define them carefully (using measures or attributes), and set priorities across different concerns.” Unaided group decisions might result in common problems such as overly stressing group loyalty, maintenance of internal cohesiveness of the group, or rapid decision making due to fatigue at the expense of the needs of the community as a whole. The group might either work towards a solution to appease group dynamics or conversely the process might break down because group members remain so focused on their agenda, be it environmental, economic, or social, that they lose site of greater objectives that might ultimately be best for their own primary issues. Similar to McDaniels et al. (1999), Gregory et al. (in press) recommends a five-step system for effective group decision-making. The five steps that a facilitator should use for guiding his process are (Gregory et al., in press):
Clearly characterizes “what matters” to the stakeholders in the form of objectives
Creates a set of attractive alternatives
Employs the best available technical information to characterize impacts of the alternatives, including uncertainties
Identifies the tradeoffs that the alternatives entail
Summarizes the areas of agreement, disagreement and reasons for those views among the stakeholders.
The primary difference between this approach and ones which didn’t succeed appears to be asking individual participants: “what alternatives can you support and why?” as opposed to “what alternatives can you agree on”. Furthermore, the work of Gregory et al. (in press) improves on the earlier list of McDaniels et al. (1999) by incorporating the need for a summary and identification of reasons for areas of agreement and disagreement. This facilitates a process where the things people can agree on are placed in a clear summarized focus for further deliberation and decision-making. A facilitator trained in identifying heuristics, such as the “fixed-pie” bias where both parties assume that they are diametrically opposed, can look for areas of joint gains to point out flaws in the heuristics employed (Gregory et al. in press). Gregory et al. (in press) demonstrate how they, as facilitators, helped the group repair several such heuristics that, if unaided, could have destroyed the decision making process.
§Summary and Conclusions
In this paper, I presented reasons for the inclusion of the public in decision-making and some of the methods currently in use. Though there are different perspectives on what method is the most effective, examination of the five steps outlined by McDaniels et al. (1999) and Gregory (in press) show considerable agreement. There is strong evidence that groups as a whole make better decisions than individuals and that having diverse representation of stakeholders allows for optimum decisions. Gregory (in press) also provides well-supported reasons to consider that a decision making process should be structured and facilitated by people trained in recognizing heuristics and eliciting objectives and alternatives. To conclude, Slovic (1999: 700) provides a succinct summary of the reasons for public involvement in decision-making:
The limitations of risk science, the importance and difficulty of maintaining trust, and the complex, sociopolitical nature of risk point to the need for a new approach – one that focuses upon introducing more public participation into both risk assessment and risk decision making in order to make the decision process more democratic, improve the relevance and quality of technical analysis, and increase the legitimacy and public acceptance of the resulting decisions.
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