Judith Petts

THE CLIMATE AND CULTURE OF ENVIRONMENTAL COMPLIANCE WITHIN SMEs

This paper reports some of the findings of an ESRC Global Environmental Change Programme project which considered the attitudes of individuals (management and non-management) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the environment and environmental compliance. The focus on individuals and an understanding of the relationship between attitudes and behaviour within businesses is essential to implementation of effective sustainable development and self-regulation policies. The research revealed that the environment is important to individuals and that environmental compliance is regarded as ‘the right thing to do’. However, the influence of the regulatory domain on businesses is revealed as considerably more complex than suggested by some other surveys. In particular the positive culture amongst individuals in businesses to the importance of compliance appears to differ from the operational climate of many SMEs; i.e. their capacity and feasibility to act. The research suggests that SMEs in general are ‘vulnerably compliant’ due to a mismatch between climate and culture. Copyright

Expert Conceptualisations of the Role of Lay Knowledge in Environmental Decisionmaking: challenges for Deliberative Democracy

The authors draw upon survey evidence of expert conceptualisations of the value of public knowledge in environmental decisionmaking. In the context of local air quality management in particular, they consider how experts understand the potential benefits of technological citizenship, and what status they accord to lay knowledge relative to their own roles. Evidence suggests a continuing expert-deficit model of lay knowledge, with suspicions that the public misunderstand environmental issues. Although the need for public ‘buy-in’ to the solutions to problems such as air pollution is supported, this does not translate to a more proactive engagement of lay knowledge in the assessment of such issues. Experts seem to be personally challenged by such notions. The authors discuss the need for a cultural shift in expert understanding of the value of lay knowledge, supported by a move away from an oversimplification of the need for, and value of, public participation.

Health risk communication and amplification: learning from the MMR vaccination controversy

Immunisation is the cornerstone of childhood disease prevention. In this context the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccination (MMR) has proved a world-wide success, although in the UK it has been at the centre of public controversy since 1998. Through the media, the public domain has witnessed contestation among expert views about the relative risks associated with the diseases vs. the potential side-effects of the vaccination. Attainment of health protection targets has been compromised. The UK Department of Health sought to redress this through a major communication exercise. This paper reports the findings of a study of information strategies that parents use to make sense of health risk issues, particularly MMR. The findings identify the importance of social networks in reinforcing parental understanding and beliefs. While the media are identified as important sources of information, there is no evidence to suggest that parents passively receive and act upon such risk messages. Official information has been able to capitalise on the strong social normalisation of vaccination, but has not responded fully to the evolving social interpretation of risks. The study reveals a preference for personal and face-to-face engagement with health professionals, stressing the importance of user-centred health risk communication.

Waste Management Strategy Development: A Case Study of Community Involvement and Consensus-Building in Hampshire

Public opposition to the siting of waste facilities has been partly explained by a failure to directly involve communities in fundamental policy decisions about waste management. Public participation at the local level is primarily reactive, based upon the premise of consultation on preferred strategies rather than direct involvement in their derivation. This paper presents the findings of a study into the effectiveness of a more proactive community involvement programme adopted by one English county council. The paper suggests some opportunities and barriers to public involvement in waste management strategy development and the potential effectiveness of consensus-building approaches.

Environmental Responsiveness, Individuals and Organizational Learning: SME Experience

This paper explores the links between management and non-management attitudes to the environment and organizational responses within SMEs. It identifies the scope for, and means by which, personal attitudes can be harnessed to motivate, activate and help operationalize business responses.The paper identifies strong personal attitudes about the environment. In some more proactive companies it identifies some of the elements of organizational learning which may assist in translating attitudes into effective behaviour-including supportive management structures, training and two-way communication. However, it also identifies organizational limits in this regard. It draws parallels with management systems in relation to health and safety.

The public—expert interface in local waste management decisions: expertise, credibility and process

Decision-making strategies which favour the top-down model do not recognize expertise as a communication and learning process, and have been seen to fail in many risk management contexts, in particular in local waste management decision-making. Examination of a novel public involvement programme in the development of a local waste strategy provides an opportunity to understand expertise as a process: in particular, (i) how expert knowledge is selected at the technical-democratic interface, (ii) how information is shaped and balanced, and (iii) whether knowledge shifts during processes of exposure to expertise. It provides evidence that counters expert views that the public are irrational, lack interest, and are concerned only about zero-risk options. Most importantly, it provides evidence that expertise is inextricably linked to its source, and that perceptions that expertise is not independent have a significant impact on public responses. Means to optimize the process of expertise are discussed.

Barriers to participation and deliberation in risk decisions: evidence from waste management

Despite increased support for extended public engagement in risk decision‐making, significant questions remain over the best means to integrated deliberative processes with conventional ‘scientific’ or technical elements. This paper analyses the barriers to analytic–deliberative processes as a means by which the public can influence risk decisions, including the generation of data and the derivation of acceptable policy options. Using evidence from waste management decision processes in Britain, the discussion identifies technical, institutional and cultural barriers to effective process. The barriers are seen to limit systematic analysis appropriate to the problems as framed by the public. The principle that the nature of the risks and the assessment required needs to be determined through discussion with the public not in advance of discussion with them is challenged by proceduralization cultures within decision authorities and ingrained technical cultural perspectives. It is evident also that fundamental barriers lie in fragmentary decision processes and weak regulation. The paper discusses the requirements for a decision‐support framework for multicriteria decision‐making with full public participation.

Rapid Climate Change and Society: Assessing Responses and Thresholds

Assessing the social risks associated with climate change requires an understanding of how humans will respond because it affects how well societies will adapt. In the case of rapid or dangerous climate change, of particular interest is the potential for these responses to cross thresholds beyond which they become maladaptive. To explore the possibility of such thresholds, a series of climate change scenarios were presented to U.K. participants whose subjective responses were recorded via interviews and surveyed using Q methodology. The results indicate an initially adaptive response to climate warming followed by a shift to maladaptation as the magnitude of change increases. Beyond this threshold, trust in collective action and institutions was diminished, negatively impacting adaptive capacity. Climate cooling invoked a qualitatively different response, although this may be a product of individuals being primed for warming because it has dominated public discourse. The climate change scenarios used in this research are severe by climatological standards. In reality, the observed responses might occur at a lower rate of change. Whatever the case, analysis of subjectivity has revealed potential for maladaptive human responses, constituting a dangerous or rapid climate threshold within the social sphere.

Boundary Work: Knowledge, Policy, and the Urban Environment

This paper explores the relations between different forms of knowledge and urban environmental policy arenas. It briefly considers the evolution of the urban environmental agenda and growing interest in questions of knowledge transfer. It then explores reasons for an apparent knowledge – policy ‘gap’, including familiar explanations, such as the problems of communicating research findings, as well as those based on more subtle and complex interpretations of both knowledge and policy processes. It concludes with some proposals for thinking about the boundary between knowledge and policy and constructive ways to enhance the sustainable urban environment agenda. The paper introduces the other contributions in this theme issue—concerned with diverse aspects of knowledge transfer in the context of urban environments—and draws upon insights from a seminar series at which these papers were first presented.

Social learning from public engagement: dreaming the impossible?

Learning that transcends participation processes is critical if public engagement is to translate into a legacy of enhanced environmental citizenship. However, a lack of empirical evidence has limited discussion to date to largely ‘aspirational’ claims. This paper offers the first rigorous examination of whether public participation does generate beyond-process social learning. Initially we review the literature on public participation and environmental citizenship to identify the key dimensions of social learning. We then re-visit a well-worked case study of an innovative public engagement process on the Hampshire waste strategy from the 1990s. Approximately one third of the original participants have been interviewed to identify whether and how the experience had a lasting effect on them. Key methodological difficulties are discussed, not least the analytical difficulties of attributing learning to a process that happened ten years previously. However, we argue that there is evidence that both instrumental and communicative learning have taken place, and conclude by identifying key areas that require further research.