Informal observations suggest that, despite a growing body of environmental agency experience with ranking and rating systems, their effectiveness in informing the decision processes they are intended to support has been very mixed. More specifically, the important actors in policy debates in which these systems are used appear about as likely to see them as irrelevant or as impediments to decisionmaking as they are to see them as truly instrumental to the outcomes achieved. This observation appears to be especially relevant to situations with the potential to affect significantly the distribution of resources outside of the managing agencies themselves, the primary focus of the proposed research. The research objectives are to explore the relationships between the real or perceived utility of ranking/rating systems in informing policy debates and an array of factors associated with a) technical aspects of how such systems are constructed, b) problem setting, and c) the institutional environment in which such systems are utilized or applied. The research will explore how values incorporated in mathematical formulations of ranking/rating systems inluence policy oriented learning, as well as how factors such as discretion, social conflict, and credibility of experts do. Thus, the study can focus on hypotheses and variables that can help in understanding and explaining when learning occurs within and between groups concerned about environmental policy. The investigator will study two cases in depth -- the use of decision systems in coastal wetlands protection and mitigation, and use of such systems in the cleanup of hazardous waste sites in the coastal zone. The research design uses review of documentation, and phone and in-person interviews. It will use expert elicitation techniques in studying the first case and, possibly, content analysis in the second study. Results from this work have both theoretical and practical interest. The investigator is well qualified; the research plan is good; the proposal is recommended for support with high priority.
