Why risk communicators should care about the fairness and competence of their public engagement process

While strong recommendations have been made by advisory bodies for increased dialogue and deliberation in risk decision-making, there remains a good deal of confusion about exactly how to conduct these kinds of risk communication processes. The advice to ‘involve people early and often’ is often stated, but the well-intentioned risk communicator might reasonably ask: Which people? How early? And how often? And, exactly what should these people be doing when they participate anyway? Despite widespread scholarship and practice into public participation, there are serious gaps in our knowledge about how to ‘do’ public participation well (Roberts 2004; NRC 2008).