TY - JOUR

T1 - How Participatory Should Environmental Governance Be?

T2 - Testing the Applicability of the Vroom-Yetton-Jago Model in Public Environmental Decision-Making

AU - Lührs, Nikolas

AU - Jager, Nicolas Wilhelm

AU - Challies, Edward

AU - Newig, Jens

PY - 2018/2/1

Y1 - 2018/2/1

N2 - Public participation is potentially useful to improve public environmental decision-making and management processes. In corporate management, the Vroom-Yetton-Jago normative decision-making model has served as a tool to help managers choose appropriate degrees of subordinate participation for effective decision-making given varying decision-making contexts. But does the model recommend participatory mechanisms that would actually benefit environmental management? This study empirically tests the improved Vroom-Jago version of the model in the public environmental decision-making context. To this end, the key variables of the Vroom-Jago model are operationalized and adapted to a public environmental governance context. The model is tested using data from a meta-analysis of 241 published cases of public environmental decision-making, yielding three main sets of findings: (1) The Vroom-Jago model proves limited in its applicability to publicenvironmental governance due to limited variance in its recommendations. We show that adjustments to key model equations make it more likely to produce meaningful recommendations. (2) We find that in most of the studied cases, public environmental managers (implicitly) employ levels of participation close to those that would have been recommended by the model. (3) An ANOVA revealed that such cases, which conform to model recommendations, generally perform better on stakeholder acceptance and environmental standards of outputs than those that diverge from the model. Public environmental management thus benefits from carefully selected and context-sensitive modes of participation.

AB - Public participation is potentially useful to improve public environmental decision-making and management processes. In corporate management, the Vroom-Yetton-Jago normative decision-making model has served as a tool to help managers choose appropriate degrees of subordinate participation for effective decision-making given varying decision-making contexts. But does the model recommend participatory mechanisms that would actually benefit environmental management? This study empirically tests the improved Vroom-Jago version of the model in the public environmental decision-making context. To this end, the key variables of the Vroom-Jago model are operationalized and adapted to a public environmental governance context. The model is tested using data from a meta-analysis of 241 published cases of public environmental decision-making, yielding three main sets of findings: (1) The Vroom-Jago model proves limited in its applicability to publicenvironmental governance due to limited variance in its recommendations. We show that adjustments to key model equations make it more likely to produce meaningful recommendations. (2) We find that in most of the studied cases, public environmental managers (implicitly) employ levels of participation close to those that would have been recommended by the model. (3) An ANOVA revealed that such cases, which conform to model recommendations, generally perform better on stakeholder acceptance and environmental standards of outputs than those that diverge from the model. Public environmental management thus benefits from carefully selected and context-sensitive modes of participation.

KW - Sustainability Science

KW - Vroom-Yetton Model

KW - Vroom-Jago Model

KW - Decision support

KW - Environmental management

KW - Participation

KW - Stakeholder engagement

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85041435440&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s00267-017-0984-3

DO - 10.1007/s00267-017-0984-3

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 29332192

VL - 61

SP - 249

EP - 262

JO - Environmental Management

JF - Environmental Management

SN - 0364-152X

IS - 2

ER -