Facts and values, cars and smog: analytical perspectives of stakeholders in air quality and transportation planning in Los Angeles, CA

Technical policy decisions can be thought of as resulting from two models: an environmental model and a preference model. The environmental model is a description of the physical and social systems affected by the policy decision. The preference model is a description of the preferences of the decision maker for the outcomes predicted by the environmental model. In many technical policy making processes, the development of the environmental model is delegated to technical experts. In these processes, efforts to involve stakeholders tend to focus on characterizing the stakeholders' preferences for various outcomes. Such efforts fail to recognize that stakeholders differ in their description of the problem as well as in their preferences. This paper presents techniques for characterizing differences in stakeholder's analytical perspectives, for exploring the effect of these differences on the structure and content of environmental models, and for estimating the impact of these differences on policy decisions. By illuminating these relationships, these techniques will contribute to a better understanding of the role of experts and other stakeholders in addressing complex policy issues. The application of these techniques in the context of air pollution and transportation planning in Los Angeles will be discussed.