Abstract Impact assessment (IA) tools are targeted at decisions and decision-making in theory and in practice. Often described as decision support instruments, most IA are driven by the grand purpose of providing for informed decision-making. In practice this often means IA tends to be more concerned with the information to be provided than with the outcomes of IA and its relevance to the decision(s), and decision-makers(s) to which it should be targeted. Decisions and decision-making are, however, understood in many different ways, and actors involved in decision-making may therefore act widely different with diverse results. Therefore, distinguishing which decisions, and to which decision-makers IA are targeted at, is arguably indispensable to enhance IA effectiveness. Based on an overview of decision-making theory, this paper searches for the understanding of decision and decision-making in IA by exploring how it is conceived in guidance documents. Guidance documents have a prominent role in defining IA practice, and the explicit and implicit recognition of decision-making in guidance is therefore relevant to investigate in order to understand how IA relates to decision-making. With a focus on guidance documents related to the European Union Directive on environmental assessment of plans and programmes, this paper scrutinises four guidance documents and discusses the implications of the identified understandings of decision-making to the practice of IA. The key finding of this paper is that legislation-oriented guidance documents appear to miss to reflect the different forms of decision-making, and primarily depicts decision-making as a single, often timeless and faceless moment. The implications for practice are discussed including reflection on how to describe the nature of decision-making in guidance documents.

中文翻译：

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只是为了让我们不要错过它：对 IA 中决策意义的批判性观点

摘要 影响评估 (IA) 工具的目标是理论和实践中的决策和决策。通常被描述为决策支持工具，大多数 IA 都是由提供知情决策的宏伟目标驱动的。在实践中，这通常意味着 IA 往往更关心要提供的信息，而不是 IA 的结果及其与决策的相关性，以及它应该针对的决策者。然而，决策和决策有多种不同的理解方式，因此参与决策的参与者的行为可能大不相同，结果也各不相同。因此，区分 IA 的目标是哪些决策以及针对哪些决策者，对于提高 IA 的有效性可以说是必不可少的。基于决策理论的概述，本论文通过探索指导文件中的决策和决策制定方式来寻找对 IA 中决策和决策的理解。指导文件在定义 IA 实践方面发挥着重要作用，因此，指南中对决策的显性和隐性承认与调查相关，以便了解 IA 与决策的关系。本文重点关注与欧盟计划和项目环境评估指令相关的指导文件，仔细审查了四份指导文件，并讨论了已确定的决策理解对 IA 实践的影响。本文的主要发现是，以立法为导向的指导文件似乎未能反映不同形式的决策，主要将决策描述为单一的、往往是永恒的和不露面的时刻。讨论了对实践的影响，包括反思如何在指导文件中描述决策的性质。