Stakeholder participation is increasingly being embedded into decision-making processes from the local to the global scale. With limited resources to engage stakeholders, frameworks that allow decision-makers to make cost-effective choices are greatly needed. In this paper, we present a structured decision-making (SDM) framework that enables environmental decision-makers to prioritise different engagement options by assessing their relative cost-effectiveness. We demonstrate the application of this framework using a case study in biosecurity management. Drawing on a scenario of Panama Disease Tropical Race 4 (TR4) invasion in the Australian banana industry, we conducted 25 semi-structured interviews and held a workshop with key stakeholders to elicit their key concerns and convert them into four objectives-making more informed decisions, maximising buy-in, empowering people, and minimising the stress of biosecurity incidents. We also identified ten engagement alternatives at local, State/Territory, and National scales. Our results showed that options to engage local stakeholders and enable capacity to undertake adaptive approaches to biosecurity management are more cost-effective than engagement efforts that seek to build capacities at higher decision-making levels. More interestingly, using the weights provided by different stakeholder groups does not significantly affect the cost-effectiveness ranking of the ten options considered. Even though the results are contingent on the context of this biosecurity study, the SDM framework developed for maximising cost-effectiveness is transferable to other areas of environmental management. The efficient frontier generated by this framework allows decision-makers to examine the trade-offs between the costs and benefits and select the best portfolio for their investment. This approach provides a practical and transparent estimate of the return on investment for stakeholder engagement in highly complex or uncertain situations, as is usually the case for environmental issues.

从本地到全球，利益相关者的参与越来越多地嵌入到决策过程中。由于缺乏足够的资源来吸引利益相关者，因此非常需要允许决策者做出具有成本效益的选择的框架。在本文中，我们提出了一个结构化的决策（SDM）框架，该框架使环境决策者能够通过评估其相对的成本效益来对不同的参与方案进行优先级排序。我们通过案例研究在生物安全管理中证明了该框架的应用。根据澳大利亚香蕉业中巴拿马病热带种族4（TR4）入侵的情景，我们进行了25次半结构化访谈，并与主要利益相关者举行了研讨会，以提出他们的主要关注点，并将其转变为四个目标，从而做出更明智的决策，最大限度地增加买进，增强人们的权能，并最大程度地减少生物安全事件带来的压力。我们还在地方，州/地区和国家级范围内确定了十种参与选择。我们的结果表明，与寻求在更高的决策水平上进行能力建设的参与工作相比，让当地利益相关者参与并提高能力采取适应性方法进行生物安全管理的选择更具成本效益。更有趣的是，使用不同利益相关者群体提供的权重不会显着影响所考虑的十种选择的成本效益排名。即使结果取决于本生物安全研究的背景，为最大化成本效益而开发的SDM框架也可以转移到环境管理的其他领域。该框架产生的有效边界使决策者可以检查成本与收益之间的取舍，并选择最佳的投资组合。这种方法为利益相关者参与高度复杂或不确定的情况（如环境问题通常如此）提供了实用，透明的投资回报估算。