On the governmental use of multi-criteria analysis

Public decision making, especially about our natural environment, is inherently exposed to a high conflict potential. The necessity to capture the complex context has led to an increasing request for decision analytic techniques as support for the decision process. Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is deemed to overcome the shortcomings of traditional decision-support tools used in economics, such as cost-benefit (CBA) or cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA). This is due, among other, to its ability of dealing with qualitative criteria (e.g. sensitive ecological factors), as well as with uncertainties about current or future impacts. Unlike CBA or CEA, MCA is rarely required by national laws or directives. Nonetheless, a number of recent MCA applications were supported by public authorities who either initiated or directly participated in such analyses. Given the theoretical assumptions about MCA's potential to support complex decision problems, as is often the case for environmental or sustainability policies, the key concern in our paper is to evaluate whether this potential has already been recognised in public decision making. For limitation purposes, the present work focuses on real-life case studies reported during the last decade with an insight in the initiation, the actors involved and the importance of the MCA results in the decision process. We argue that the significance and role played by MCA so far reaches beyond its current legal requirements.     

Insights into the reception and acceptance of risk messages: nuclear emergency communication

The objective of this paper is to test whether the effect of variables such as knowledge, attitudes, trust, risk perception, and psychometric risk characteristics changes in the different stages of risk-related information processing. To address this question, a distinction is made between two information-processing steps, reception (measured as a person’s ability to retain the information communicated) and acceptance (measured as a person’s level of agreement with the communicated information). An empirical study was conducted, using a radiological accident (2008) in Belgium as a communication case study. Face-to-face interviews were conducted on a large sample of Belgian population representative with respect to province, region, level of urbanization, gender, age, and professionally active status (N?=?1031) and among the population living in vicinity of the accident (N?=?104). All factors were measured on reliable scales (Cronbach’s α?>?.75). The reception–acceptance model was used to produce new insights into risk communication. The results demonstrate that knowledge was the driving factor only for the reception of risk messages, while heuristic predictors such as psychometric risk characteristics, attitudes, and trust were most influential for the acceptance of risk messages. It is discussed how the results will facilitate a more thorough understanding of information processing and how they could be used to design more focused risk communication strategies.     

“How are you vulnerable?”: Using participation for vulnerability analysis in emergency planning

Scientists in many fields of research have developed models, theories, and concepts attempting to grasp and manage dangers that are often difficult to imagine. Among the different perspectives, the science and technology studies (STS) vulnerability approach seems very promising. Relying on a constructivist paradigm, it is based on an inductive collection and analysis of a wide range of factors, with a particular focus on cultural factors and actual day-to-day practices. In this paper, we present the roots of this approach and we display findings based on three case studies exploring emergency planning in three different contexts (a city near a SEVESO plant, a school near a nuclear plant, and a city confronted to multiple catastrophic scenarios). The cases studies were realized by conducting three Focus Groups with different types of stakeholders (citizens, teachers, firemen, decision-makers, etc.). After presenting the results of the case studies, we discuss how stakeholders’ participation can inform such type of vulnerability analysis in the context of emergency planning. We argue that participation fosters a deep understanding of actual safety governance practices which allows innovative results to emerge as well as it initiates a learning process among the participants. It contributes to questioning the relations between decision-makers, experts, and citizens. It has the potential of bypassing the positivist and quantitative rationale of safety, and thus, of redefining the vulnerability governance. As a conclusion, we question the role of such STS vulnerability approach within the actual vulnerability governance.