Using Q-methodology in environmental sustainability research: A bibliometric analysis and systematic review

By Gretchen Sneegas, Sydney Beckner, C. Brannstrom, W. Jepson, K. Lee, L. Seghezzo. 2021

149 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Since its first mention in Ecological Economics over two decades ago (Barry and Proops, 1999), numerous socio-environmental researchers have adopted Q-methodology to investigate social perspectives on environmental governance. Q-methodology, hereafter referred to as “Qmethod,” is a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach that offers replicable steps to elicit key stakeholders' social perspectives on a wideranging set of issues that directly bear on the efficacy, barriers, and social processes in environmental policymaking and governance. Since Barry and Proops' influential paper, environmental social scientists have used Q-method to empirically determine different social perspectives among key actors involved in decision making around the sustainable conservation and management of natural resources, demonstrating its effectiveness for understanding “the interlinkages in opinions between topics or patterns of perspectives” (Mukherjee et al., 2018: 57). Stakeholder perspectives are increasingly recognized as important for socio-environmental research, with growing demand for engaging stakeholders across research activities. Q-method is frequently used to delineate and understand different stakeholder perspectives across such diverse fields as energy, land use, fisheries management, mining, wildlife conservation, agriculture, and water resource management, making it particularly salient as a means to inform sustainability practice and policy. Q-method offers researchers replicable, evidencebased results that may support decision-makers in management options assessment, critical reflection, policy appraisal and acceptability, and conflict resolution (Zabala et al., 2018). This paper takes a closer look at the last 18 years of Q-methodological socio-environmental work in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. We aim to provide researchers wishing to engage stakeholder perspectives with clearer guidelines on Q-method application, analysis, and reporting. To the best of our knowledge, no publication has reviewed the recent growth in socio-environmental Q-method research used to study stakeholder perspectives on socio-environmental topics. This existing body of Q-method research is highly heterogeneous in terms of methodological practice and reporting strategies, but has yet to be catalogued and analyzed. A more comprehensive review of the method's application in the field is needed to establish research trends, shared gaps, and best practices. We address this need by conducting a systematic review and bibliometric analysis of empirical Q-method studies on environmental sustainability. First, we examine the status and trends of current Qmethod scholarship on environmental sustainability, defined for the purposes of this review as relating to the sustainable conservation and management of natural resources as a key site of socio-environmental interaction. We develop and analyze a corpus of 277 empirical Qmethod studies published in peer reviewed journals between 2000 and 2018. Second, we identify gaps in this literature in terms of research design, practice, analysis, and geographic coverage. Our analysis illustrates considerable heterogeneity in the application of Q-method, exposing many publications that are opaque regarding decisions in study design and data analysis. Third, we synthesize best practices for addressing these gaps and highlight best practices for conducting and reporting Q-method research. Section 2 outlines Q-method development and protocol. Section 3 discusses the systematic review methodology used in this study. Sections 4 and 5 respectively summarize the bibliometric analysis and systematic review results. Sections 6 and 7 examine trends, gaps, and best practices, and make recommendations for researchers using Qmethod to support environmental sustainability research. We conclude by summarizing key findings, study limitations, and future research directions.

Subfields: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Management Science and Operations Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eb82b16ba0fad1cad68e2fdaf7f00e236e6a2f3b