Citizen Participation In Environmental Decision-making Research

The issue of environmental governance has been discussed for many years in China, nevertheless, there are lots of problems that still need to be tackled and solved. In recent years, government agencies and academic groups have widely adopted the ideal of citizen participation to deepen democratization and treated citizen participation as a prescription to renew environmental policy-making.Along this context, this thesis examines the role of environmental policy-making in the case of citizen participation in Korea, USA and Finland, collecting both qualitative as well as quantitative data to assess the deliberative effect of citizen participation. Based on the experience of foreign citizen participation in environmental policy-making, and the ladder of citizen participation, the decision-making structures theory, the findings reveal that the citizen participation shows some benefits. These benefits may resolve the dilemmas of environmental policy-making and advance its practical feasibility.Towards this end, it presents the results of citizens and NGOs designed to gain a sense about the likelihood of involvement in a contentious environmental movement. This suggests that citizen participation should positively examine the emotional factor in expression, actively engage more NGOs, and enhance incentives for citizen participation. Besides, a citizen conference may be established to integrate resources and to assist citizen of the community to practice environment governance. The article concludes with a brief discussion of avenues for future research.