Exploring the range of approaches for recruitment, facilitation, and qualitative methods in deliberative valuation: Evidence from 66 case studies

Deliberative valuation (DV) methods are widely used to improve the valuation of ecosystem services and the quality of environmental decisions through the engagement of communities and the ability to trace people's preferences and values, leading to more legitimate, equitable, and publicly supported decisions. Yet, there remains aspects of DV that are difficult to address, leading to inconsistency and gaps in knowledge related to recruitment, facilitation, and qualitative methods. This review analyzed 66 DV workshops, selecting for case studies that incorporated qualitative methods, most of which also conducted complementary quantitative methods. Across the reviewed literature, selective recruitment strategies predominated, with an emphasis on stakeholder participation. Most case studies used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods and incorporated nonmonetary techniques and/or attributes either alone or paired with monetary techniques and/or attributes. Almost half of the case studies elicited both individual and group values. Challenges such as addressing fair recruitment of participants, facilitation for fair participation within workshops, changes in values over time, and monitoring the political impact of results, were only explored in a portion of the papers. In addition, case study methods were highly variable and inconsistently reported. A summary of the DV workshop process is provided, categories are proposed and methods are summarized for value formation, articulation, elicitation, and qualitative analysis, and guidelines are proposed for fair recruitment and facilitation. Future applications can use this information when designing DV workshops to ensure that studies capture the full benefits of DV and communicate results in a transparent and impactful way.