Socio-economic effects monitoring: toward improvements informed by bio-physical effects monitoring

In this paper, using two case studies from the Hibernia offshore platform construction project, we argue that follow-up based on the hypothesistesting approach typically adopted in biophysical effects monitoring could be more widely adopted in socio-economic effects monitoring. While there are some significantly different issues associated with socio-economic and biophysical monitoring, we argue that such an approach in the socio-economic context would encourage more focused attention on monitoring objectives, more appropriate data collection and clearer identification of project-specific impacts, thereby offering more credible and useful information to decision-makers than is now often the case.