Constructing a Collaborative Research Platform to Test How Well Cultural and Other Theories Explain Regulation of Environmental, Health, and Safety Risks in the US, Europe, and China

How are environmental, health, and safety risks defined, assessed, and regulated in the US, Europe, and China? What are the causes and consequences of similarities and differences in regulatory governance of these risks in these regions? This paper describes the construction of a collaborative research platform to answer these questions, the cultural theory (CT) of risk and regulation that we intend to test as an explanation for regulatory governance across these regions, and how the theory is being operationalized for these purposes. This ongoing project creates a basis for testing CT and other theories of risk regulation and policymaking on a representative sample of environmental, health, and safety risk regulation regimes in these regions using a mixed method approach called comparative nested analysis. The paper describes conceptual, methodological, administrative, institutional, and funding challenges overcome and remaining; pilot studies in the US, UK, and Netherlands using classroom research; the extension of the research to China; preliminary results of risk ranking for size of risk and regulatory effort and how this relationship will be analyzed; and plans to study interest group influences on regulatory governance using CT to specify underspecified aspects of advocacy coalition and narrative explanations.