From Childhood Poverty to Catfish: A Conceptual Participatory Modelling Framework for Strategic Decision Making

2.1 Participatory Decision Making

A participatory decision making approach is one in which members of the public and/or stakeholders of the system being investigated participate in some ways in the decision making process. There exists a variety of participatory methodologies for public participation ranging from passive participation (information about already made plans and decisions are communicated to the public) to active participation (Giupponi, Mysiak, & Sgobbi, 2008). In active participatory research, members of a community identify a problem, collect and analyse data and act upon the problem to find solutions and promote social and political transformations (Selener, 1997). The rationale for participation is that the public is more likely to accept a policy when they are consulted beforehand or when they take an active part in the definition of the policy. Since decisions are based on shared knowledge and vision as well as experiences, scientific evidence or subjective but informed judgements, participatory approaches have the potential to improve decision making (Giupponi et al., 2008). Furthermore, a participatory approach has the potential to promote the social learning (Bandura, 1977) needed for an in-depth analysis capable of accommodating the breadth and depth that characterise the scope and complexity of social and environmental systems. Information emerging from an active participatory process is constantly checked for accuracy by feeding it back to the persons who provided it and by cross-checking with other stakeholders for agreement.