Empowerment through shared decision making: A case study of the Okanagan Shuswap Land and Resource Management planning process

There is a growing belief that to achieve sustainability, citizens will need to become “environmental citizens.” One characteristic of environmental citizenship is empowerment. The central question explored by the dissertation was the potential for shared decision making (SDM), an emerging approach to environmental decision making, to foster empowerment among its participants.; The dissertation focused on (1) the components and core steps of empowerment; (2) the extent and manner SDM fosters the core steps of empowerment among participants; (3) the implications of participants' experiences of one core step of empowerment for the occurrence of the other core steps of empowerment; (4) the variables that promote or inhibit the occurrence of the core steps of empowerment; and (5) the potential for the empowerment experienced by participants to be self-sustaining.; The research was a case study of the Okanagan-Shuswap Land and Resource Management Planning process (OSLRMP) in British Columbia. My research paradigm was constructivist and my research design was a longitudinal study based on pre-, mid- and post-process measurements of the participants' levels of empowerment using several qualitative data collection methods.; Empowerment was defined as consisting of six components, including self-efficacy, knowledge and skills, opportunity, resources, action and impact. Six core steps to the empowerment process were identified: increasing self-efficacy, increasing knowledge and skills, creating or receiving an opportunity, acquiring or receiving resources, taking action and having an impact. The study focused on three core steps: increasing knowledge and skills, creating or receiving opportunity, and acquiring or receiving resources. Of the 30 participants who were the focus of the analysis, four were very highly empowered in the OSLRMP, eight were highly empowered, 12 were moderately empowered and six were not empowered. When pre-existing levels of empowerment are controlled for, ten participants experienced large increases in empowerment in the OSLRMP, while 11 experienced moderate increases and nine experienced few to no increases. Most of the core steps of empowerment have a positive and direct relationship with each other. Several key variables that promote and inhibit empowerment were identified. The extent to which the empowerment experienced by participants will be self-sustaining was unclear.