Browsing by Author "O'Brien, Caleb"

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    Climate adaptation as a team process: the role of place-based climate adaptation workshops in catalysing collective action
    O'Brien, Caleb; Stern, Marc J.; Brousseau, Jennifer J.; Hansen, Lara J. (Routledge, 2025-01-10)
    Place-based climate adaptation workshops are an increasingly common approach to advance collective efforts to cope with the effects of climate change. Despite their increasing prevalence, uncertainty remains about effective and ineffective elements of these processes. We conducted a comparative case study across 30 communities in which workshops took place in the United States between 2017 and 2020 to identify which workshop characteristics were most often associated with subsequent adaptation-related planning and action. We examined these workshops through a team process lens to reveal which inputs, processes, and emergent states distinguished workshops with substantial evidence of positive impact (n¼6) from those with little impact (n¼6). Key factors included the involvement of a local champion, co-design of the workshop between facilitators and participants, and sustained engagement post-workshop. As more communities embark on multisectoral processes meant to catalyze collective climate action, these findings offer insights for ensuring efforts are as effective as possible.
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    Participant perspectives on effective elements and impacts of climate change adaptation workshops in the United States
    O'Brien, Caleb; Stern, Marc J.; Brousseau, Jennifer J.; Hansen, Lara J.; Hull, R. Bruce (Elsevier, 2024-01)
    Communities in the United States are increasingly relying on place-based climate adaptation workshops to aid attempts to prepare for—and cope with—climate change, but there is limited empirical evidence about what participants believe these workshops can achieve and what elements they find most valuable. To begin addressing this gap, we sought to understand participant perceptions of effective workshop elements and outcomes across a wide range of locations and workshop formats. We surveyed participants in 33 place-based adaptation workshops that took place in the United States between 2017 and 2020. We sought to understand participants’ perceptions of the outcomes of these workshops and the workshop elements that drove those outcomes. Results suggest that workshop participants commonly believed that they learned, strengthened their sense of efficacy, and deepened relationships with other workshop attendees. Participants identified specific climate actions resulting from the workshop, including knowledge dissemination efforts and project implementation. We argue that effective adaptation workshops can also expand reference groups and foster norms around climate change adaptation.
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    Understanding learning and action in place-based climate adaptation workshops
    O'Brien, Caleb (Virginia Tech, 2023-10-11)
    Addressing today's complex environmental challenges requires learning, collaboration across sectors, and long-term collective action. This dissertation examines the role of place-based climate adaptation workshops can play in helping communities as they grapple with the current and anticipated effects of anthropogenic climate change. The manuscript contains five chapters. The introduction (Chapter 1) presents the phenomenon of place-based climate adaptation workshops and offers an overview of the research in this dissertation. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are stand-alone manuscripts. Chapter 2 draws upon surveys with participants in 33 workshops that took place in the United States between 2017 and 2020 to identify perceptions of meaningful outcomes and effective workshop elements. Chapter 3 describes a comparative case study that delves more deeply into 30 of the workshops from Chapter 2 and includes interviews with facilitators and local organizers to identify which workshop characteristics were most often associated with subsequent adaptation-related planning and action. In Chapter 4, we examine learning processes and outcomes in eight additional adaptation workshops held in communities in the United States from 2021 and 2023 by testing a hypothesized learning typology and exploring how it aligns with the theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation. Our findings suggest that workshops contribute to learning, strengthened feelings of efficacy, and deepened relationships, which, in turn, can yield meaningful planning and action outcomes. We suggest that workshops also expand reference groups and foster norms around climate change adaptation. We identify a range of factors that are associated with higher-performing workshops, including the presence of a local champion, co-design of workshop with participants, sustained support from workshop organizers or a backbone support organization, and a suite of effective facilitation techniques. Our exploration of learning in climate adaptation workshops indicated that learning takes place within distinct declarative, procedural, and relational domains and across tacit and explicit dimensions. We found no differences in participants' learning outcomes between in-person and online workshops. Our findings suggest that effective workshops could be designed to help participants articulate, share, and combine disparate sets and forms of knowledge. In the conclusion (Chapter 5) , I synthesize our findings and reflect on my Ph.D. experience.