Thomas Webler
Biographic Data
| ID | 252167 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Thomas Webler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | Webler |
| SIGNATURE | WEBLER T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Social and Environmental Research Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4165-0889 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 318 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Community civic capacities for meaningful engagement in siting infrastructure for the energy transition
To address the driving forces of climate change and to ensure society has reliable and plentiful energy, considerable amounts of new energy infrastructure will need to be built in scores of communities over the near future. Democratic societies give communities considerable authority, influence, and autonomy on land-use decisions and regulatory policy making. Involving community members and stakeholders in decision making about facility siting an…
The challenge of community acceptance of small nuclear reactors
Nuclear power is being promoted as a safe and reliable energy source that can contribute to the decarbonization goals of nations and states. A great deal of recent attention is on the role of small modular reactors and micro-reactors for providing heat and electricity. To be impactful, many hundreds of these small capacity reactors would have to be deployed rapidly. Consequently, hundreds of communities in a wide variety of settings would need to…
The social amplification of risk framework
Several decades have elapsed since the introduction in 1988 of the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) by researchers from Clark University and Decision Research. SARF was offered as an umbrella under which social, psychological, and cultural theories of risk could be integrated and thereby supplement technical risk analyses. Some critics suggest that SARF cannot be tested thus, the framework is useful, at most, as a post hoc analysis o…
Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors about Cigarette-Butt Littering among College-Aged Adults in the United States
This study reports attitudes, beliefs, and littering behaviors of 7532 college-aged cigarette smokers from across the United States. Four behavioral variables were measured: littering of last cigarette butt, number of butts littered in past 24 h, littering in past month, and ever having littered. Questions about beliefs centered on whether cigarette butts are biodegradable, if butts were harmful to the environment, and if butts are considered to …
Controversy and consensus in the design of a consent-based siting process for radioactive waste
Assessment of adaptation, policy, and capacity building outcomes from 14 processes
Unpacking the idea of democratic community consent-based siting for energy infrastructure
We highlight issues relevant to a consent-based siting process for energy facilities with the intent to inform government officials, planners, and stakeholders on potential critical issues and challenges associated with such a process. In this paper we trace the history and meaning of “consent” in the academic literature associated with medical ethics, research ethics, international development, and political theory. We identify key themes and ch…
Toward a method for the rapid collection of public concerns and benefits of emerging energy technologies
The speed and scale with which new technologies emerge sometimes force decision makers to act without the benefit of thorough risk analyses and environmental and social impact analyses. Insights from interested and affected parties (IAPs) can be tapped to alert decision makers to expected risks and benefits associated with emerging technologies. One of the methodological challenges has been to identify IAPs with relevant knowledge of the emerging…
Stormwater Management in a Time of Climate Change
Numerous decision support tools have been developed to assist stormwater managers to understand future scenarios and devise management strategies. This paper presents one such tool, the Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) process, and reports on experiences from its deployment in 10 coastal communities on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. VCAPS helps to elucidate local complexities, couplings, and contextual nuance …
Eliciting public concerns about an emerging energy technology
Risk, Uncertainty and Rational Action
Risk as we now know it is a wholly new phenomenon, the by-product of our ever more complex and powerful technologies. In business, policy making, and in everyday life, it demands a new way of looking at technological and environmental uncertainty. In this definitive volume, four of the world's leading risk researchers present a fundamental critique of the prevailing approaches to understanding and managing risk - the 'rational actor paradigm'. Th…
Using Q Method for the Formative Evaluation of Public Participation Processes
Public participation can benefit from formative evaluation to learn from experience and recommend improvements to the participation process as it is happening. Q method is a promising tool for conducting formative evaluations. It specifies the different perspectives held by participants about the process and clarifies the sources of their agreement and disagreement. Further advantages are that the technique relies on a minimal number of research …
Social Narratives Surrounding Dolphins
In preparation for development of an exhibit on the cognitive abilities of dolphins, the Wildlife Conservation Society sought to determine potential visitor's social perspectives about dolphin intelligence, and how these beliefs might influence acceptance of scientific information. The study reported here used Q methodology to identify these underlying social perspectives. The study of adults and the study of children each revealed three distinct…
Four Perspectives on Public Participation Process in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making
Knowing how people think about public participation processes and knowing what people want from these processes is essential to crafting a legitimate and effective process and delivering a program that is widely viewed as meaningful and successful. This article reports on research to investigate the nature of diversity among participants' perceptions of what is the most appropriate public participation process for environmental assessment and dec…
Introduction to the Special Edition
Competing perspectives on public involvement
Public involvement is increasingly emphasized as part of government agencies' responses to environmental health hazards, including risk characterization and risk communication. For example, there is a growing body of literature on health and risk communication proposing best practices and evaluating processes, yet there has been little attention to the ways that preferences for process features and criteria for evaluating success may vary among s…
Participation by Local Governmental Officials in Watershed Management Planning
This article reports on a study that explores what factors influence the decisions of New England local governmental officials (LGOs) to participate (or not) in regional collaborative environmental policymaking on watershed management planning. Q methodology was used to find coherent narratives that captured basic perspectives LGOs took toward the opportunity to participate in a watershed management planning process. Five perspectives emerged fro…
Unlocking the Puzzle of Public Participation
Public participation is well known for its practitioner insights and wealth of case reports. This knowledge is essential and has been well employed. Likewise, the theoretical literature on public participation is growing rapidly. The need for better conceptual and theoretical understandings of public participation has become clear. Public participation theories have not received great attention, and few have been proposed or tested. Yet theory of…
What Is a Good Public Participation Process? Five Perspectives from the Public
Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation
This article reports progress on developing a theory of public participation that may prove useful to administrative bodies. The authors review a theory of public participation based on Habermas's theory of communicative action and then reconsider the theory in light of a case study. Participants of a forest policy-making process reported their perceptions of a good process, and the authors used grounded theory methodology to induce criteria of g…
The craft and theory of public participation
This article proposes the craft-theory dialectic as a novel way to conceptualize advancement in the field of public participation. In this perspective, the field is characterized by a rich base of experiential knowledge and a scattered, but growing literature on theory. The chief challenge is to coordinate these two ways of knowing in an iterative, integrative fashion that enables practice to learn from theory and theory to learn from practice. P…
Integrating Technical Analysis With Deliberation in Regional Watershed Management Planning
This paper suggests that applications of watershed management planning would benefit from a theoretical consideration of the policymaking process. A conceptual schema from the field of risk analysis proposes that policymaking be conceived of as a combination of two types of activities: analysis and deliberation. We argue that these concepts are relevant to watershed management planning and we illustrate how a process successfully might integrate …
Der kooperative Diskurs
Complex modern societies require new ways of political conflict solution, especially concerning environmental conflicts. We distinguish six forms of conflict solution, including those of mediated bargaining and cooperative discourse. If one opts for cooperative discourse, further orientation according to criteria such as fairness, competence, legitimation and efficiency seems to be important. Three procedural steps within cooperative discourse-i.…
“Right” Discourse in Citizen Participation
Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation
Public participation in decision making
Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation
This article reports progress on developing a theory of public participation that may prove useful to administrative bodies. The authors review a theory of public participation based on Habermas's theory of communicative action and then reconsider the theory in light of a case study. Participants of a forest policy-making process reported their perceptions of a good process, and the authors used grounded theory methodology to induce criteria of g…
Public participation in impact assessment
Four Perspectives on Public Participation Process in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making
Knowing how people think about public participation processes and knowing what people want from these processes is essential to crafting a legitimate and effective process and delivering a program that is widely viewed as meaningful and successful. This article reports on research to investigate the nature of diversity among participants' perceptions of what is the most appropriate public participation process for environmental assessment and dec…
The craft and theory of public participation
This article proposes the craft-theory dialectic as a novel way to conceptualize advancement in the field of public participation. In this perspective, the field is characterized by a rich base of experiential knowledge and a scattered, but growing literature on theory. The chief challenge is to coordinate these two ways of knowing in an iterative, integrative fashion that enables practice to learn from theory and theory to learn from practice. P…
Eliciting public concerns about an emerging energy technology
Participation by Local Governmental Officials in Watershed Management Planning
This article reports on a study that explores what factors influence the decisions of New England local governmental officials (LGOs) to participate (or not) in regional collaborative environmental policymaking on watershed management planning. Q methodology was used to find coherent narratives that captured basic perspectives LGOs took toward the opportunity to participate in a watershed management planning process. Five perspectives emerged fro…
Using Q Method for the Formative Evaluation of Public Participation Processes
Public participation can benefit from formative evaluation to learn from experience and recommend improvements to the participation process as it is happening. Q method is a promising tool for conducting formative evaluations. It specifies the different perspectives held by participants about the process and clarifies the sources of their agreement and disagreement. Further advantages are that the technique relies on a minimal number of research …
Integrating Technical Analysis With Deliberation in Regional Watershed Management Planning
This paper suggests that applications of watershed management planning would benefit from a theoretical consideration of the policymaking process. A conceptual schema from the field of risk analysis proposes that policymaking be conceived of as a combination of two types of activities: analysis and deliberation. We argue that these concepts are relevant to watershed management planning and we illustrate how a process successfully might integrate …
Social Narratives Surrounding Dolphins
In preparation for development of an exhibit on the cognitive abilities of dolphins, the Wildlife Conservation Society sought to determine potential visitor's social perspectives about dolphin intelligence, and how these beliefs might influence acceptance of scientific information. The study reported here used Q methodology to identify these underlying social perspectives. The study of adults and the study of children each revealed three distinct…
Controversy and consensus in the design of a consent-based siting process for radioactive waste
Assessment of adaptation, policy, and capacity building outcomes from 14 processes
Unpacking the idea of democratic community consent-based siting for energy infrastructure
We highlight issues relevant to a consent-based siting process for energy facilities with the intent to inform government officials, planners, and stakeholders on potential critical issues and challenges associated with such a process. In this paper we trace the history and meaning of “consent” in the academic literature associated with medical ethics, research ethics, international development, and political theory. We identify key themes and ch…
Introduction to the Special Edition
Anticipating Conflicts
A major problem of environmental policy making is to anticipate potential conflicts among the major participants and to reach a suitable understanding or compromise that meets both competence vis-a-vis the decision problem and fairness vis-a-vis the affected population. This paper introduces a novel model of public involvement in decisions about solid waste disposal in specific and environmental management in general. Structured in three consecut…
Public participation in decision making
“Right” Discourse in Citizen Participation
Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation
Public participation in impact assessment
Der kooperative Diskurs
Complex modern societies require new ways of political conflict solution, especially concerning environmental conflicts. We distinguish six forms of conflict solution, including those of mediated bargaining and cooperative discourse. If one opts for cooperative discourse, further orientation according to criteria such as fairness, competence, legitimation and efficiency seems to be important. Three procedural steps within cooperative discourse-i.…
The craft and theory of public participation
This article proposes the craft-theory dialectic as a novel way to conceptualize advancement in the field of public participation. In this perspective, the field is characterized by a rich base of experiential knowledge and a scattered, but growing literature on theory. The chief challenge is to coordinate these two ways of knowing in an iterative, integrative fashion that enables practice to learn from theory and theory to learn from practice. P…
Integrating Technical Analysis With Deliberation in Regional Watershed Management Planning
This paper suggests that applications of watershed management planning would benefit from a theoretical consideration of the policymaking process. A conceptual schema from the field of risk analysis proposes that policymaking be conceived of as a combination of two types of activities: analysis and deliberation. We argue that these concepts are relevant to watershed management planning and we illustrate how a process successfully might integrate …
Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation
This article reports progress on developing a theory of public participation that may prove useful to administrative bodies. The authors review a theory of public participation based on Habermas's theory of communicative action and then reconsider the theory in light of a case study. Participants of a forest policy-making process reported their perceptions of a good process, and the authors used grounded theory methodology to induce criteria of g…
What Is a Good Public Participation Process? Five Perspectives from the Public
Unlocking the Puzzle of Public Participation
Public participation is well known for its practitioner insights and wealth of case reports. This knowledge is essential and has been well employed. Likewise, the theoretical literature on public participation is growing rapidly. The need for better conceptual and theoretical understandings of public participation has become clear. Public participation theories have not received great attention, and few have been proposed or tested. Yet theory of…
Participation by Local Governmental Officials in Watershed Management Planning
This article reports on a study that explores what factors influence the decisions of New England local governmental officials (LGOs) to participate (or not) in regional collaborative environmental policymaking on watershed management planning. Q methodology was used to find coherent narratives that captured basic perspectives LGOs took toward the opportunity to participate in a watershed management planning process. Five perspectives emerged fro…
Competing perspectives on public involvement
Public involvement is increasingly emphasized as part of government agencies' responses to environmental health hazards, including risk characterization and risk communication. For example, there is a growing body of literature on health and risk communication proposing best practices and evaluating processes, yet there has been little attention to the ways that preferences for process features and criteria for evaluating success may vary among s…
Social Narratives Surrounding Dolphins
In preparation for development of an exhibit on the cognitive abilities of dolphins, the Wildlife Conservation Society sought to determine potential visitor's social perspectives about dolphin intelligence, and how these beliefs might influence acceptance of scientific information. The study reported here used Q methodology to identify these underlying social perspectives. The study of adults and the study of children each revealed three distinct…
Four Perspectives on Public Participation Process in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making
Knowing how people think about public participation processes and knowing what people want from these processes is essential to crafting a legitimate and effective process and delivering a program that is widely viewed as meaningful and successful. This article reports on research to investigate the nature of diversity among participants' perceptions of what is the most appropriate public participation process for environmental assessment and dec…
Introduction to the Special Edition
Using Q Method for the Formative Evaluation of Public Participation Processes
Public participation can benefit from formative evaluation to learn from experience and recommend improvements to the participation process as it is happening. Q method is a promising tool for conducting formative evaluations. It specifies the different perspectives held by participants about the process and clarifies the sources of their agreement and disagreement. Further advantages are that the technique relies on a minimal number of research …
Risk, Uncertainty and Rational Action
Risk as we now know it is a wholly new phenomenon, the by-product of our ever more complex and powerful technologies. In business, policy making, and in everyday life, it demands a new way of looking at technological and environmental uncertainty. In this definitive volume, four of the world's leading risk researchers present a fundamental critique of the prevailing approaches to understanding and managing risk - the 'rational actor paradigm'. Th…
Eliciting public concerns about an emerging energy technology
Stormwater Management in a Time of Climate Change
Numerous decision support tools have been developed to assist stormwater managers to understand future scenarios and devise management strategies. This paper presents one such tool, the Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) process, and reports on experiences from its deployment in 10 coastal communities on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. VCAPS helps to elucidate local complexities, couplings, and contextual nuance …
Toward a method for the rapid collection of public concerns and benefits of emerging energy technologies
The speed and scale with which new technologies emerge sometimes force decision makers to act without the benefit of thorough risk analyses and environmental and social impact analyses. Insights from interested and affected parties (IAPs) can be tapped to alert decision makers to expected risks and benefits associated with emerging technologies. One of the methodological challenges has been to identify IAPs with relevant knowledge of the emerging…
Assessment of adaptation, policy, and capacity building outcomes from 14 processes
Unpacking the idea of democratic community consent-based siting for energy infrastructure
We highlight issues relevant to a consent-based siting process for energy facilities with the intent to inform government officials, planners, and stakeholders on potential critical issues and challenges associated with such a process. In this paper we trace the history and meaning of “consent” in the academic literature associated with medical ethics, research ethics, international development, and political theory. We identify key themes and ch…
The social amplification of risk framework
Several decades have elapsed since the introduction in 1988 of the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) by researchers from Clark University and Decision Research. SARF was offered as an umbrella under which social, psychological, and cultural theories of risk could be integrated and thereby supplement technical risk analyses. Some critics suggest that SARF cannot be tested thus, the framework is useful, at most, as a post hoc analysis o…
Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors about Cigarette-Butt Littering among College-Aged Adults in the United States
This study reports attitudes, beliefs, and littering behaviors of 7532 college-aged cigarette smokers from across the United States. Four behavioral variables were measured: littering of last cigarette butt, number of butts littered in past 24 h, littering in past month, and ever having littered. Questions about beliefs centered on whether cigarette butts are biodegradable, if butts were harmful to the environment, and if butts are considered to …
Political science (19 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · Business (14 works) · Public relations (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Engineering (11 works) · Economics (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Process (computing (9 works) · Psychology (9 works)