The situational public engagement model in a municipal watershed protection program: information seeking, information sharing, and the use of organizational and social media

• Date: 01 August 2016
• Published date: 01 August 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1583

■Academic Paper

The situational public engagement model

in a municipal watershed protection

program: information seeking,

information sharing, and the use of

organizational and social media

Joon Soo Lim

1

, Cary A. Greenwood

2

and Hua Jiang

1

*

1

Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA

2

Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, USA

In an extension of the situational theory of publics, we tested a situational engagement model to answer how

situational factors affect public engagement via both communication behaviors and the use of social media

and organizational media. As part of the evaluation of a collaborative stormwater outreach and education

campaign, a campus-wide survey, assisted by a large public university’s public affairs office, was conducted

to identify key predictors of public engagement in a watershed protection program. A path analysis for the pro-

posed situation engagement model revealed that problem recognition was the key to predicting both information

seeking and sharing. The path analysis also yielded a significant association between communication behaviors

and public engagement, mediated by the use of organizational media in seeking information on the issue.

Further, the analysis showed a significant direct effect of involvement on engagement. The current study

provided a preliminary framework that explains individuals’environmental behaviors in today’s participatory

and user-generating media environment. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed. Copyright ©

2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

In municipal affairs, water qualitycontrol and water-

shed protection have become increasingly important

and contentious. Municipal government is expected

to help citizensmake informed decisions andencour-

age their active engagement in civic activities to pro-

tect watersheds (Dolnicar & Hurlimann, 2011; Doron,

Teh,Haklay, & Bell,2011). Natural resources agencies

often seek education and communication strategies

to promoteeffective conservationbehaviors (Monroe,

2003). They expend a great deal of effort to educate

and reach out to citizens in collaboration with local

environmental advocacy groups. The ultimate goal

that those agencies want to achieve through such a

great effort is to increase public engagement in

conservation-related behaviors.

In their influential conceptual paper, Rowe and

Frewer (2005) defined public engagement as the

combination of the three concepts of public commu-

nication, public consultation, and public participa-

tion. In a nutshell, public engagement is a process

in which ‘the public is involved in some limited man-

ner in the practices of policy-making bodies’(Rowe,

Horlick-Jones, Walls, & Pidgeon, 2005, p. 331).

*Correspondence to: Hua Jiang, S.I. Newhouse School of Public

Communications, Syracuse University, 215 University Pl,

Syracuse, NY 13210, USA.

E-mail: hjiang07@syr.edu

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 16 Number 3 pp 231–244 (2016)

Published online 24 September 2015 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1583

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.