Institutional Design and Decision-Maker Response: An Investigation of Environmental Policy and Research.

摘要

The development of effective environmental policy and the research to support it is both predicated on and informed by institutions. Institutions affect decision-maker behavior by influencing preferences, framing choices, and establishing expectations. This dissertation employs historical institutionalism as an overarching framework to unify the three essays contained within it. Each essay is concerned with a particular issue area within the field of environmental policy, but all three collectively explore how institutional context affects the behavior of decision-makers and the methods employed by policy scholars. Viewing these collected works through the lens of historical institutionalism provides insight into the mechanics perpetuating institutions in both policy and research. Having thus identified what perpetuates these institutions, one is better equipped to identify the changes necessary to better address today's pressing environmental challenges.;The first essay demonstrates how the literatures surrounding the analysis of property rights regimes in natural resource management are fragmented, leading to incomplete learning and a failure to capture (and therefore understand or model) key dynamics of a situation. The essay shows how institutional change can lead to new insights, new approaches, and increased innovation. It does so through a comparison of property rights frameworks across institutional theory, legal, and economic literatures. It discusses how frameworks can evolve over time to capture an increasing array of research questions, the incentives and constraints which contribute to the path dependency of individual lines of research, and how a failure to evolve may limit their applicability to important, emerging natural resource management issues. The essay concludes with a case study applying a revised property rights framework applied to Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programs.;The second essay investigates how distinct institutional contexts influence participant decision-making in different segments of the bioenergy market, suggesting that uniform national policies cannot capture the nuanced drivers affecting participant choice and therefore may fail to achieve broad-based producer response. To inform the development of policies best suited to encourage the participation of biomass producers, the essay explores the factors that have been found to be associated with biomass feedstock production decisions in the Southeastern and Midwestern U.S. Using social network analysis to assess the relationships between study variables across different user groups, feedstock types, and geographic areas, the essay shows that the factors used to investigate biomass market participation decisions vary across feedstock type and geographic region.;The third essay examines how institutions influence stakeholder participation in policy reform efforts, how participation can influence institutional design, and how institutional change could facilitate greater involvement from potentially under-served stakeholders. This essay employs a convergent mixed methods design and leverages a large data set of public comments and conservation plans to provide insight into efforts to reform implementation of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Through an exploration of public participation in the development and implementation of policy, the essay illustrates how administrative reform processes could make use of multiple data sources both to draw in those not participating and to gain insights into necessary reforms. For stakeholder applicant and land use types with a greater instance of comment letter submission than plan participation, the essay suggests that existing ESA policies may be ineffective in meeting stakeholder needs. For those applicant and land use types with greater instance of plan participation than comment submission, the essay suggests that valuable input on policy implementation is foregone so long as these users are underrepresented.