A Study of the Relationship Between Ecological Risk Communication and Lay Public Participation in Federal Rulemaking Concerning Ecological Risks

摘要

There is a significant need to enhance the lack of lay citizen involvement in governmental decision-making processes to manage ecological risks. This involvement is particularly important to potentially enhance these processes' quality. Scholars assert the impediment to this lay public participation is the failure to communicate ecological risks to the lay public in a manner that effectively reduces the findings' complexity and makes the ecological risk message salient and relevant to their concerns. This research tested this assertion.;Two studies were conducted. The first successfully researched use of the mental models approach to risk communication to develop pesticide ecological risk assessment materials carefully adapted to lay knowledge levels that communicated in a way that was applicable to public concerns and interests. Results showed that expert and lay models of ecological risks posed by a pesticide differed: Experts recognized at least twice as many ways a pesticide could affect non-target plants and animals.;The second study evaluated the extent to which lay citizens would be motivated to participate in a mock U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decision-making proceeding to manage pesticide ecological risks when the risks message is adapted to lay knowledge levels using the mental models approach to risk communication, and communicated in a way that is applicable to lay concerns or interests. Two groups of students from a Mid-Atlantic university were randomly assigned to read either an original pesticide risk assessment of a fictitious pesticide, or a revised version informed by analysis laypersons' mental models. Both the treatment and control groups had 90 students. Participants read either the treatment or control text and completed an assessment of their environmental attitudes. No main effect for revising the risk assessment text was found. Instead, the study found that the more pro-environmentally conscious lay citizens were, the more interested they were in participating in an EPA rulemaking proceeding to regulate a pesticide's ecological risk, irrespective of how the message was communicated to them.;These findings could have significant implications in helping the U.S. government obtain its goal of being more transparent and participatory, especially regarding policy development for managing ecological risks.