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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2025 Mar 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Environ Manage. 2024 Feb 19;354:120270. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.120270

Table 3.

Key perspectives and findings from SDR pilot interviews and relevant quotes. Quotes are numbered as related to each component of the definition of the key findings.

Perspective or Finding Description Supporting participant quotes
Stakeholders enjoyed working with the research arm of EPA and struggled with the bureaucracy of government research 1. A positive first experience working with EPA as a research partner rather than as a regulatory agency. External stakeholders found EPA researchers to be approachable and collaborative throughout the SDR pilot projects.
2. Stakeholders struggled with the incongruent paces of their action-oriented organizations and the government in getting approval to conduct experiments and disseminate results.		 1a. External stakeholder: The positive experience of working with EPA employees within ORD, “puts a different light on EPA.” Stakeholders enjoyed the “non-threatening, very pleasant, very smart, very helpful, eager” energy that came with working with ORD.
2. External stakeholder: “Knowing how much more there was to the story but needing to wait for everything to get through the final analysis and approval process was a really long time… we really wanted to encourage [people] to take some steps.”
Researchers and stakeholders had holistic definitions of project success Interviewees identified as markers of success for the project:

  1. Trust and relationship building,

  2. Stakeholders using SDR project science to inform actions,

  3. In-process and adaptive communication,

  4. Accomplishing research goals,

  5. Transferable and long-term results, and

  6. Publishing peer-reviewed research

 1. EPA researcher: “I think the partnerships are key metric of success.”
2. External stakeholder: “The project will be successful if we can get some more definitive information around the different approaches on Cape Cod and be able to relay that to others”
3. EPA researcher: “Are partners feeling that they are learning and that they are satisfied with the way information is flowing?”
4. External stakeholder: “I think it’s successful to have good sound work that stands unto itself.”
5. External stakeholder: “You want to see those results contributing to the bigger conversation and being used elsewhere, helping inform decisions in other places.”
6. “My standard as a scientist is peer-reviewed papers. I feel strongly about sharing those across the field. I would say most of our stakeholders like scientific papers in that they provide the stamp of validation for some of our work.”
SDR is different from a basic environmental research approach The SDR process is seen as differing in the

  1. emphasis on stakeholder- and theory-driven engagement to define research questions, implementation, and deliverables, and

  2. integration of research components that requires high levels of internal communication among multiple research disciplines

 1a. EPA researcher: “This project has been far more intentional and far more proactive in terms of seeking folks out and seeking out a wide variety of people across different levels of governance and different sectors and just making sure we’re regularly communicating with them and seeking their input.”
1b. EPA researcher: “I think that it [helped keep us] grounded in what people actually need and want, instead of what we just think is intellectually interesting.”
2. EPA researcher: “Usually it’s head down at the lab bench, and nobody knows what you’re doing. I think with such a large project or so many different avenues and so many researchers, it was really helpful to have coordination meetings with the whole EPA team.”