Effects of participatory processes on the quality and use of information in planning: Case studies in national forest management in northern California

This dissertation relates to the practice of institutional decision making on environmental problems. It addresses new forms of making social choices in bureaucratic contexts which are increasingly forced to reach outside their institutional boundaries in order to cope with a world of rapid change. The study focuses on the way the United States Forest Service (USFS) conducts land management, how it uses information, and how it involves the public in its national forest management planning process. It reviews USFS planning and legal framework and analyzes current trends in the agency's planning practice as it relates to public participation. The Klamath and the Six Rivers National Forests planning processes serve as case studies of these current trends, and illustrate the Forest Service's attempt to cope with change when it was clear that business as usual was not working.;The Klamath and the Six Rivers case studies are analyzed and discussed in the light of current planning models and the knowledge utilization literature; these cases are evaluated using an adaptation of Innes' framework for evaluation of consensus building processes. This dissertation investigates the role information played in these processes, and reflects on how these participatory processes differed from more traditional decision-making processes in the type and use of information.;This study found that the type of planning process has a major influence on the roles that information plays and types of information that gets used. On the basis of the Klamath and the Six Rivers cases, this dissertation argues that consensus plans, creative solutions, empowerment of experts, and interest group satisfaction are most likely to emerge when public participation takes a dialogic form. In such a process, participants build on information in a way that is not possible through traditional in-house planning; planners have the opportunity to validate strategic information, which enables them to verify untested assumptions and constraints, and open up their decision space. A framework of interactive information exchange between planners and stakeholders represents a collaborative process best adapted to today's forest planning uncertainties.