Salience, Credibility, Legitimacy and Boundaries: Linking Research, Assessment and Decision Making

Abstract

The boundary between science and policy is only one of several boundaries that hinder the linking of scientific and technical information to decision making. Managing boundaries between disciplines, across scales of geography and jurisdiction, and between different forms of knowledge is also often critical to transferring information. The research presented in this paper finds that information requires three (not mutually exclusive) attributes -salience, credibility, and legitimacy -and that what makes boundary crossing difficult is that actors on different sides of a boundary perceive and value salience, credibility, and legitimacy differently. Presenting research on water management regimes in the United States, international agricultural research systems, El Niño forecasting systems in the Pacific and southern Africa, and fisheries in the North Atlantic, this paper explores: 1) how effective boundary work involves creating salient, credible, and legitimate information simultaneously for multiple audiences; 2) the thresholds, complementarities and tradeoffs between salience, credibility, and legitimacy when crossing boundaries; and 3) propositions for institutional mechanisms in boundary organizations which effectively balance tradeoffs, take advantage on complementarities, and reach thresholds of salience, credibility, and legitimacy.

Exploring the science–policy interface on climate change: The role of the IPCC in informing local decision-making in the UK

“…Cash et al (2002) suggest that evidence used to inform decision-making requires three key interconnected attributes: credibility (of the information produced through peer review and of those producing and reviewing it), salience (relevance of the information produced to decision makers), and legitimacy (the extent to which the information produced is fair and considered the values and needs of different actors). While much emphasis is placed on credibility in the IPCC process and a growing emphasis on legitimacy, we argue that salience, particularly in the context of local decision-making, is lacking.…”

Bridging policy and science action boundaries: information influences on US congressional legislative key staff decision making in natural resources

“…These studies indicate that policymakers tend to act on policy-related information when it is perceived as relevant, credible, and legitimate (RCL) ( Fig. 2) with multiple audiences (Cash et al 2002;Clark et al 2016). RCL is used in this study as the framework for which to create a contextual understanding.…”

“…In addition, the source of the information must be perceived or judged as believable or trustworthy. Even if information is relevant, it will tend to be ignored if not considered credible (Cash et al 2002).…”

“…If the information is deemed relevant and credible, but is not perceived as having been produced or used in a legitimate way, it has a low probability of being used (Cash et al 2002). This quality criterion is considered to be essential for information to transfer across science-policy boundaries and be used as ''actionable knowledge'' that influences policy decision making and action (Meinke et al 2006).…”

The role of meteorological processes in the description of uncertainty for climate change decision-making

“…In the past, the "practitioner's dilemma" was a lack of downscaled products to choose from, but now, it refers to the challenge of knowing how to choose from a large supply of data in decision making (Barsugli et al 2013). Cash et al (2002) describe three characteristics of scientific information that are necessary for it to be usable in decision making, and they are salience (relevance), credibility (plausible and adequate), and legitimacy (institutionally unbiased). Of these three traits, we focus on the scientific credibility of downscaled climate model projections.…”