Asking questions for adaptation

Public and stakeholder involvement in environmental decision-making presents trade-offs between staying small – building deep connections and reciprocal understanding within a small group of people – or going wide to understand the general views of a broader, and possibly more representative, portion of a population. This chapter presents the ways in which “going wide” by systematically asking a similar set of questions to members of a population through survey research can contribute to climate change adaptation efforts. With four case studies from across the United States, we investigate the ways in which surveys have (1) facilitated issue awareness among the public, (2) enabled the design of outreach and education programs, (3) helped assess policy viability, (4) promoted state and local adaptation action, and (5) generated policy-relevant social science to inform governance decisions. Based on the case studies, we present a series of suggestions that researchers and policymakers may want to consider in deciding when and how to use surveys for coastal adaptation.