Benefit-cost analysis can play an important role in legislative and regulatory policy debates on protecting and improving health, safety, and the natural environment. Although formal benefit-cost analysis should not be viewed as either necessary or sufficient for designing sensible public policy, it can provide an exceptionally useful framework for consistently organizing disparate information, and in this way, it can greatly improve the process and, hence, the outcome of policy analysis. If properly done, benefit-cost analysis can be of great help to agencies participating in the development of environmental, health, and safety regulations, and it can likewise be useful in evaluating agency decision-making and in shaping statutes.
Environmental policy-making has become more dependent on formal, quantitative risk assessment because of increasing attention to the prevention of human health damage from toxic chemicals. Risk assessment helps set priorities for regulation of the very large numbers of chemicals that are of potential concern and helps direct limited social and government resources against the most significant risks. Although the scientific basis for risk assessment is often uncertain and the public and its representatives have often been confused by its use in regulatory decisions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency currently uses a variety of risk assessment techniques to set priorities, tailor regulations, and make decisions at particular sites. The Environmental Protection Agency also attempts to make the practice of risk assessment more consistent throughout the agency and to improve public understanding of the meaning of risk assessment and risk management.
NAPAP was an institutional innovation of great benefit in bringing the United States to a decision on acid precipitation control. The nation's return from the $600 000 000 investment in NAPAP will be greater still if the lessons learned in the course of its existence are put to proper use in the future. This essay concentrates on the lessons learned about the interface between science and public policy as experienced in NAPAP.
This article asks under what circumstances controversial technologies would be considered seriously for remediation instead of being rejected out of hand. To address this question, the authors developed a conceptual framework called public acceptability of controversial technologies (PACT). PACT considers site-specific, decision-oriented dialogues among the individuals and groups involved in selecting or recommending hazardous waste remediation technologies. It distinguishes technology acceptability, that is, a willingness to consider seriously, from technology acceptance, the decision to deploy. The framework integrates four dimensions: (1) an acceptability continuum that underlies decision-oriented dialogues among individuals and constituency groups, (2) the attributes of these individuals and groups, (3) the attributes of the technology at issue, and (4) the community context—social, institutional, and physical. This article describes and explores PACT as a tool for understanding and better predicting the acceptability of controversial technologies.
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