The Importance of Context and the Effect of Information and Deliberation on Opinion Change Regarding Environmental Issues in Citizens’ Juries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Title: The importance of context and the effect of information and deliberation on opinion change regarding environmental issues in citizens’ juries

Date: 06.07.2021

The paper focuses on the way deliberative bodies such as citizens’ juries contribute to developing informed recommendations on a specific policy issue, typically at sub-national level. More specifically it aims to cover a clearly identified gap in the available literature, by exploring when and why jurors change their minds throughout the process. The argumentation is built on three local contexts of onshore windfarm development in Scotland. Thematically speaking the analysis fits fully both within the most recent literature interests and the purview of Sustainability. Furthermore, the text is logically constructed and well-written. In my view, this analysis represents an extremely solid and innovative research that will definitely influence the literature on deliberative bodies and can be published as it is.

Small clarifications might be needed in the first part of the analysis (although all these aspects are thoroughly treated in the subsequent sections).

• Clarify the expectations in the introduction as well as the potential limitations due to the focus on the environmental governance.
• Similarly, a small caveat on potential limitations due to the fact that the paper analyses three standardised citizens’ juries organised as a research project rather than an official policy process. If possible add a reference to the capacity to achieve generalized knowledge (see Flyvbjerg 2005).
• Although fully coherent with the theoretical section, the presentation of the 5 hypotheses is a little bit too schematic. Additional details on the rationale behind and implications might reinforce the clarity of the analysis.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments on our manuscript.

In relation to expectations and limitations of the study, we have added the following text in lines 82-86.

Lines 82-86

Despite it being a research project, it aims to offer insights of relevance to environmental governance, especially given the proliferation of mini-publics on this topic, and the need to understand better the dynamics within these processes. Nonetheless, due to the limitations of size and context, this study is only one of several that will be needed to generate reliable and coherent theory for the purposes of policy.

 

We have added the following paragraph (lines 702-711) to address the potential limitations of our study and in relation to your point about generalisation.  Following Flyvbjerg, we emphasise the importance of accumulating case study exemplars to produce generalised knowledge, rather than relying on statistical analysis alone, which shows detail on the average and spread of typical cases, but often lacks context-rich information.

Lines: 702-711

Our comparative case study research adds further exemplars of the importance of pre-discursive work on opinion change and how particular features that maximize the contextual differences, in this case the level of development of on-shore windfarms, while holding others constant (socio-demography, information and witnesses), reveal how mini-publics, such as citizens’ juries, can affect outcomes. Albeit these findings were derived from an academic research project, they will be important knowledge for the use of citizens’ juries in an official policy process.  As Flyvbjerg asserts [84], the richness of detail provided by case studies, however small in themselves, can contribute multiple exemplars to the cumulative development of generalised knowledge in a way that large samples may not.

 

In relation to your comment about the schematic nature of the hypotheses, we believe we have given the theoretical justification for them in the earlier sections, with brief rationales provided immediately following each one.  However, for clarity we have underlined this point in lines 313-315.

Lines: 313-315

These are presented schematically for ease of reference and overview, but they follow from the insights gleaned from the earlier sections, with brief rationales provided after each one.

Reviewer 2 Report

According to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development stressing the need to “ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels”, with regard to the environmental governance issue, the paper intends to assess whether and to what extent deliberative democracy - envisaged as the best fitting with opinion change throughout the process - can help in policy and decision making, letting argument prevail over ideology.

The state of the art and the research design are sound, well conducted and clearly explained.

Being the tenet that learning, open-mindedness and deliberation are likely to stimulate opinion reflection beyond biases, the focus was to investigate when and why change occurs and whether the causes are consistent across juries that consider the same topic but are situated within different contexts.

Within the field of climate action and sustainable development, the paper addresses onshore windfarm development in three Scottish case studies: Coldstream: not considered as yet; Helensburgh: under consideration; Aberfeldy: already operating. This choice helped featuring three standardized citizens’ juries, notably 'mini-publics', engaged in a two full days workshop in contexts reflecting different levels of development relating to the topic under discussion.

Some hypotheses were set up related to the phases of the process, other were place-specific.

In outlining some opinion changes, it was found that the information phase had a greater impact than the deliberative one: however, as the authors argue, caution is mandatory, and there is deliberation in the information phase, and there is information in the deliberative phase.

Definitely, despite reliability of such experiment dealing with opinion change over the process successfully tested and assessed by statistical methods, and despite the emergence of specific features inherent to each case study, the obtained results cannot be generalized.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments on our manuscript.

In relation to your point about generalisation, we have added the following paragraph (in lines 702-711), which emphasises the importance of accumulating case study exemplars to produce generalised knowledge, rather than relying on statistical analysis alone, which shows detail on the average and spread of typical cases, but often lacks context-rich information.

Lines: 702-711

Our comparative case study research adds further exemplars of the importance of pre-discursive work on opinion change and how particular features that maximize the contextual differences, in this case the level of development of on-shore windfarms, while holding others constant (socio-demography, information and witnesses), reveal how mini-publics, such as citizens’ juries, can affect outcomes. Albeit these findings were derived from an academic research project, they will be important knowledge for the use of citizens’ juries in an official policy process.  As Flyvbjerg asserts [84], the richness of detail provided by case studies, however small in themselves, can contribute multiple exemplars to the cumulative development of generalised knowledge in a way that large samples may not.

 

Reviewer 3 Report

The research topic is very important and interesting.

The research design is appropriate and the authors mention previous literature and the current paper's contribution well.

The only concern that I hope the authors address is a small sample size. The size of the entire sample is 47 and the sample size in each town varies from 14 (Helensburge) to 18 (Aberfeldy). These numbers are rather small to derive any definitie statistical results. 

I understand the limitation of field studies, especially under this topic. But I hope the authors still mention the limitation more formally in the paper and also compare with the sample sizes of other similar papers. 

Finally, I was wondering that the result that information phase is most important might be somehow related to  adherence or obedience to authority. In the first day (information phase), the juries see the presentations of experts (from universities and NGOs, for example), in other words, people with authority. 

Overall, I think the research topic is important and interesting and the authors present their methods and results well.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpful comments on our manuscript.

In relation to your points about sample size, we believe that the study is within the typical range of sample sizes for citizens’ juries (referenced in line 193) and, given it includes three comparable cases, has an overall sample size much greater than the norm.  We also specify the sample size for the illustrative case of Goodin and Niemeyer (in line 229).

Line 193: added: “(typically 12-25 [46])”

Lines: 228-231

Research on the ‘Far North Queensland Citizens’ Jury’ in Australia sought to re-solve this shortcoming [33].  Twelve jurors were surveyed at the beginning and end of the jury process, and once during the process between the information phase and the deliberation phase of the jury.

In relation to your interesting observation about authority, we have amended the text in lines 558 to 580.

Lines 558-563:

However, as discussed earlier, Goodin [34,35] and Goodin and Niemeyer [33] emphasise that it is not necessarily deliberation, per se, that causes opinion reflection and opinion change, but a combination of a focus of attention on the issue, the acquisition of information about it, and a process of internal reflection, possibly induced by having to deliberate the issues later in the process and the need to find a publicly defensible position.

Lines 566-568

Goodin and Niemeyer [33] believe that the pre-discursive phase will invariably have greater salience than the deliberation phase, by changing the way that jurors relate to an issue.

Lines 578-580

It is possible that the witnesses, representing organisations with presumed authority, had an inordinate effect on some jurors, especially if their own knowledge on the issue was limited. This was the second most important reason for opinion change in the Goodin and Niemeyer study [33].