The Chesapeake Assessment Scenario Tool (CAST) serves multiple key functions in meeting nutrient reduction targets across the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (CBW) and is embedded in the water quality governance system. To investigate contested perspectives regarding the model, we interviewed 59 stakeholders engaged in model governance across the CBW. We recorded statements regarding the accuracy, legitimacy, and credibility of the model, influences on its use, and on challenges and opportunities. We found skepticism regarding the legitimacy of CAST, including suggestions its role facilitates a “paper process” of policy design and that past experience has greater influence on policy decisions than model predictions. However, despite its perceived shortcomings, CAST has been central in helping stakeholders in prioritizing mitigative activities. With respect to credibility, most respondents believe the model underestimates the effects of nutrient-reduction practices, thereby underestimating progress toward TMDL-related goals. Respondents also identified opportunities for model improvement, emphasizing co-benefits of conservation practices over and above nutrient reduction. Overall, our analysis demonstrates a Collaborative Policy Modeling Paradox: collaborative model development is necessary for effective policy modeling, but the political processes of collaborative model development can negatively impact perceptions of salience, credibility, and legitimacy. Although it is important to recognize this paradox, as it is linked to dissatisfaction with the models, our findings also point to areas where improvement has occurred and to future opportunities for development.
Stakeholder participation in social-ecological systems (SES) modeling is increasingly considered a desirable way to elicit diverse sources of knowledge about SES behavior and to promote inclusive decision-making in SES. Understanding how participatory modeling processes function in the context of long-term adaptive management of SES may allow for better design of participatory processes to achieve the intended outcomes of inclusionary knowledge, representativeness, and social learning, while avoiding unintended outcomes. Long-term adaptive management contexts often include political influences -- attempts to shift or preserve power structures and authority, and efforts to represent the political and economic interests of stakeholders -- in the computer models that are used to shape policy making and implementation. In this research, we examine a period that included a major transition in the watershed model used for management of the Chesapeake Bay in the United States. The Chesapeake Bay watershed model has been in development since the 1980s, and is considered by many to be an exemplary case of participatory modeling. We use documentary analysis and interviews with participants involved in the model application and development transition to reveal a variety of ways in which participatory modeling may be subject to different kinds of political influences, some of which resulted in unintended outcomes, including: perceptions of difficulty updating the model in substantive ways, “gaming” of the model/participatory process by stakeholders, and increasing resistance against considering uncertainty in the system not captured by the model. This research suggests unintended or negative outcomes may be associated with both participatory decision-making and stakeholder learning even though they are so often touted as the benefits of participatory modeling. We end with a hypothesis that further development of a theory of computer model governance to bridge model impact and broader theories of environmental governance at the science-policy interface may result in improved SES modeling outcomes.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 2238552
- PAR ID:
- 10503504
- Publisher / Repository:
- Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Socio-Environmental Systems Modelling
- Volume:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 2663-3027
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 18509
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- participatory modeling science policy evidence-based policy boundary objects watershed management
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.18174/sesmo.18509
