The environmental impact statement (EIS) process is central to the assessment of environmentally significant actions. Yet decisions about what matters in the environment and what gets studied as part of an EIS are based on values that are largely implicit and come primarily from technical...

Several approaches exist to illuminate and clarify public values relevant for making public policy decisions. These include surveys, indirect and direct value elicitation, focus groups and public involvement. This paper describes a new approach, called the public value forum, which combines...