Rural Decision Research Articles

“Plenty of Vaccines, but Not Enough Arms”: A Social-Ecological Approach to COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy in Rural US Communities

This article leads off the special issue’s first section on Health, Mental Health, and Well-Being Today Among Marginalized Populations. It draws from multiple disciplines to address COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in rural areas of the United States. Presenting a synthesis of literature on rural vaccine hesitancy and emerging research and scientific opinion on COVID 19, we identify likely factors in rural decision-making about COVID-19 vaccination. Vaccination is underway, with plans to provide access to every U.S. resident. However, polls suggest vaccine hesitancy may compromise our ability to reach the goal of herd immunity, and rural residents express more hesitancy than their urban and suburban counterparts. Drawing on Thomson et al.’s (2016) identification of five dimensions of vaccine uptake, we use a social-ecological approach to propose actions to increase vaccine acceptance on individual, interpersonal, organizational, community, and cultural levels. This conceptual paper is a starting point for rural health and human services administrators and practitioners seeking to reduce COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in their communities in this early stage of COVID-19 vaccination.

Planning and policy documents as transactions costs: the case of rural decision-making in England

The growth in community involvement in public domain decisions for rural spaces in England over the past 20 years has increased the overall costs of such decision-making. These transaction's costs can be grouped into four types pertaining to organisations, institutions, belief systems and knowledge and information (K&I). Within the last of these, costs can arise because of a lack of K&I, the costs of procuring K&I and K&I overload. In an empirical survey in Gloucestershire county in the south west region of England K&I transaction's costs were found to be increasing, particularly in relation to procurement and overload. The number of planning and policy documents as a subset of K&I had increased considerably in the case study area such that for the rural district of the Cotswolds 60 plans pertained simultaneously in 2007. Despite this, many of those involved in decision-making about rural spaces felt the costs involved in assimilating the information that they contained were worth paying if it allowed them to be better informed.

Differentiating Trust in Rural Decision-making, Drawing on an English Case Study

Within the context of rural civic participation, three different types of trust are described, based on Simmelian-related constructs: personal trust, system trust and instrumental trust. Each has two components, a justification and a leap of faith. These vary in proportion according to degrees of knowledge held. Shifts in public domain decision-making have changed the emphasis of different types of trust. In using constructs of social capital to explore rural decision-making, bonding social capital is seen to cohere around notions of personal trust, bridging social capital around system trust and contested social capital around instrumental trust. In rural decision-making it is suggested, drawing from case study evidence in Gloucestershire, that personal trust is becoming increasingly important because of the localisation of decision-making and ambiguities in representation. A greater reliance is also being placed on system trust because of increasingly complex decision-making structures. While in principle instrumental trust can be ameliorated through access to knowledge and information, increasingly, the volume of information is problematic, and decision-makers are relinquishing their knowledge to ‘experts’.

The Disempowerment of Empowerment: How Stakeholding Clogs Up Rural Decision-making

In the context of a growth in both participatory democracy and responsible participation, rural decision-making in England has become increasingly complex over the past 30 years, fuelled by national polices relating to regionalism, citizenship and relocalisation. A survey of ‘agents of rural governance’ (ARGs) in the county of Gloucestershire, England, charts their recent growth, reasons for formation and perceived jurisdiction as well as examining complexities of decision-making relating to partnerships, networks and finance. The survey suggests that policies designed to ‘empower’ rural people can be seen to have clogged up rural decision-making processes sufficiently to have, effectively, disempowered many of them. The paper identifies and exemplifies six different types of ‘clogging up’ that impact upon rural decision-making: crowding, knotting, clouding, meandering, subverting and impoverishing. Whilst governmental proposals have been introduced in an attempt to rationalise this decision-making complexity, particularly through the Haskins Review and the English National Rural Strategy, other policy strands have conspired to make such decision-making essentially laissez faire.

A participatory approach for integrating risk assessment into rural decision-making: A case study in Santa Catarina, Brazil

Incomplete information is one of the main constraints for decision-making, which are then by definition risky. In this study, formal risk concepts were introduced in decision-makers’ meetings according to local demands and following a participatory approach, as a first step towards integrating risk assessment into rural decision-making in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Semi-structured interviews and meetings were conducted with extensionists and farmers. The following information was presented and discussed: (1) the time series and frequency distribution of maize yield predictions, simulated by the GAPS computer program for 16 feasible planting dates, representing climatic risks, both within and between years; and (2) a simple economic analysis (gross margin) and income probabilities for seven land-use options over a recent five-year period, followed by an interactive exercise where probabilities of achieving user-supplied target gross margins were calculated according to participants’ actual information, using the computer program @RISK. This paper also investigates decision-makers’ attitudes towards risk, and how these were influenced by objective information. Although results from a study such as this are not definitive, considering that the effects of the information on actual decision-making require some time to become evident, it was already possible to conclude that the risk-orientated information presented according to local demands and following a participatory approach had a positive impact on decision-makers’ understanding and perceptions. This approach should be further explored to effectively integrate risk assessment into rural decision-making.

Enhancing Environmental Decision-making Using Citizens' Juries

Survey techniques such as contingent valuation and opinion polls are used to develop an understanding of consumer preferences for the environment in the context of environmental decision-making. However, the exposure of weaknesses in such methods has led researchers to look to other information-gathering approaches which might enhance, complement or replace survey-based approaches. One such approach is that of the citizens' jury. A citizens' jury consists of a small group of people, selected to represent the general public rather than any interest-group or sector, which meets to deliberate upon a policy question. The paper critically evaluates the role that the citizens' jury might play in aiding environmental decision-making. Two case studies are reported where the citizens' jury process is used: first, to make recommendations on rural environmental projects in the Borders Region of Scotland; and, secondly, on meeting air quality targets in Edinburgh, Scotland. The paper concludes with recommendations on how the citizens' jury might complement other methods of environmental decision support and indicates the role that citizens' juries may play in future environmental and rural decision-making.