Voices from the forest: What participants expect of a public participationprocess

It is now widely accepted that members of the public should be involved in environmental decision-making. Many researchers have attempted to define pr ocess and outcome principles for "good" public participation. The emphasis of this study is on the process. We asked participants in a forest policyma king process about their ideas of "good" process. We used an approach based on the qualitative method of grounded theory to inductively identify princ iples. Seven categories of principles emerged from the analysis: access to the process, power to influence process and outcomes, access to information , structural characteristics to promote constructive interactions, facilita tion of constructive personal behaviors, adequate analysis, and enabling of future processes. We elaborate and discuss the categories and variations a mong the participants. The results provide a derailed and intriguing pictur e of how the people in our case study think about participation.