Qualitative interviews

Qualitative interviewing, and more specifically semi-structured in-depth interviewing, is

247 _{Mason (n 245).}

248 _{Michelle O'Reilly and Nicola Parker, ‘'Unsatisfactory Saturation': A Critical Exploration of The Notion of}

employed as the research method. This emphasises detailed and rich answers. The in-depth nature of this research method aims to ‘gain a detailed insight into’ research questions from the perspective of respondents.249

According to the literature, in-depth interviews can be employed to explore, for example, ‘how people make decisions’ and ‘the motivation for certain behaviour’.250

This research seeks to explain and understand why NGOs become involved or not in GE as a policy area, which involves an idea of identifying how NGOs make decisions on their involvement or non-involvement and why they are motivated to become engaged in or stay clear of GE. Therefore, an in-depth interview is the appropriate method for this research. In addition, in-depth interviews, rather than other methods such as questionnaires, are more effective in gathering ‘privileged information’ if keys players can be approached.251

In terms of this research, the purpose is to investigate the deep reasons for NGO participation in GE. The most effective way of acquiring a rich amount of privileged information is to approach directors or those in senior leadership positions in NGOs. Therefore, by conducting in-depth interviews with directors or their equivalents in targeted groups in the UK and China, insights into NGO participation can be collected.

The in-depth interview takes a form of semi-structured interview in this research. It is different from structured and unstructured interview methods as structured interviewing entails ‘the administration of an interview schedule by an interviewer’.252

This means that respondents are given the same context of questioning in order to ensure that their answers can be coded and processed quickly. Structured interviews are normally associated with

249 _{Hennink, Hutter and Bailey (n 200).} 250 _Ibid.

251 _{Carey (n 192).} 252 _{Bryman (n 47).}

quantitative research methods. Unstructured interviews are another typical form of qualitative interview. During an unstructured interview, there may be just a single question to which the interviewee can respond freely, which is considered very similar to a normal conversation.253

This research employs semi-structured interviewing, which not only allows room for respondents but also expects them to follow a script to a certain extent; it demands rich and detailed answers for analysing rather than simple answers that are easily aggregated. In addition, a semi-structured interview is more effective in obtaining what is expected from respondents compared to an unstructured method: it involves the advantage of sticking to the research purpose and research questions. For the purposes of the current project, an interview guide containing a list of questions was been prepared before the formal interviews were conducted.

The project included two phases: an initial pilot interview and a then series of formal interviews. Before the interviews started, a research ethical approval from University of Reading was attained in January 2016 for my research. Thepilot study is not only designed to ‘test how well the interview flows but in order to gain some experience’, which helps refine the interview questions.254

The pilot interview aims not only to refine the interview design for the formal study but also helps answer several aspects of the research question. It provided experience that can be used to feed back into re-design of the formal interviews, which not only helped refine questions but also offered an outsider angle that generated valuable insights. Although there were various stakeholders involved in GE who could provide an indirect angle on ENGOs, the pilot study singled out meteorologists. This is

253 _Ibid. 254 _Ibid.

because, according to the existing public participation literature, scientists are a key part of traditional expert regulation of new technologies. Among various actors, they invariably play a central part in regulating novel technology, providing professional advice to regulators or governments. Depending on past collaborative experience with NGOs in governance, scientists can be expected to form views on NGO participation in regulating novel technology. Therefore, it was appropriate to invite meteorologists as respondents for the pilot study, as they are not only GE professionals but also tend to be experienced in collaborating with NGOs in regulating new technologies.

The formal interviews aimed to explore answers for two research questions: the first question of whether NGOs have engaged with GE or not in the UK and China, and the main research question of why NGOs become involved in GE as a policy area or not in both countries. As a part of the public, the participation of NGOs, which is considered as the dependent variable in this research, has been discussed in the existing relevant literature. As mentioned in chapter 2, the majority of the literature on public participation in environmental law focuses mainly on several aspects, the first of which is the rationale of public participation. There are several main themes regarding the rationale of public participation: public participation as solutions to improve procedural legitimacy; participation to improve results and decisions as a substantive approach; public participation itself as an alternative regulatory tool against traditional command-and-control approach. The second involves methods of public participation. The third focus of the literature is on the benefits of as well as barriers to public participation.255

255 _{Albert and Passmore (n 174).}

However, among the various topics discussed surrounding public participation, little attention has been made to the causes of NGO participation and what leads NGO, as an actor in public participation, to engage with certain policy areas, such as GE.

Pilot study

Time scale: from 20 May to 20 June 2016 Location: Reading

Participants: the pilot interview was conducted in the UK with an academic meteorologist in the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading who has not only expertise in GE but also collaboration experience with NGOs. In China, the pilot interview was conducted with two scholars involved in the ‘National 973 Project’ specifically on GE research.256

The two scientists were selected as respondents for the pilot interview because they are the only ones who have expertise on GE and possess a clear understanding of the situation concerning it in China.

Procedure: first, invitations were sent by email attached with a question outline and an information sheet included as attachments; a time and location were then arranged according to the convenience of participants. Each pilot interview lasted for 45-60 minutes and the whole process was recorded. The languages used in the interviews in the UK and China were English and Mandarin respectively.

256 _{Wenqi Zhang and Weijing Hao, ‘The Launch of National '973 Project' on Geoengineering’ CSSN (16 June, 2015)}

The question outline for the pilot interviews is listed in the appendix. The first part of question outline seeks to rate the knowledge of participants about GE and form a general picture of their perceptions of GE. The second part aims to investigate their views on GE governance and make revisions for the formal study according to the results of the pilot interview. The last section aims to investigate the involvement or non-involvement of NGOs from a scientific community perspective.

Formal interviews

Time scale: from 25 June to 25 Sep 2016 Location: China and the UK

Participants: Two categories of respondents in the UK were selected: NGOs involved in GE include Greenpeace UK, FoE, WWF, Blue & Green Tomorrow, Biofuel Watch and ETC Group; non-involved NGOs include Practical Action, ClientEarth, and TearFund. As none of Chinese NGOs have engaged with GE, only non-involved NGOs were selected as respondents including Greenpeace China, China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation (CBCGDF), Hande Institute of Environment Observation (HDIEO), The Institute of the Public and Environment Affairs (IPE), and Lvxing Taihang, which range from international NGOs to grassroots NGOs.

Procedure: invitations for the interviews were sent by email with a question outline and information sheet included as attachments; following this, the time and location were then arranged according to the convenience of participants. Each formal interview lasted for

45-60 minutes and the whole process was recorded. The language used in the interviews was either English or Mandarin.

The question outline for the formal interviews is listed in the appendix. The first part of the question outline seeks to form a general picture of staff members’ knowledge about GE, while the second part tries to explore their different attitudes towards it and how they make decisions on their involvement or non-involvement.