Meta-analysis on SEA's effectiveness evaluation criteria: a comparison between the Chinese and international contexts.

By integrating the environmental consideration into the earliest stage of decision-making, Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is seen as an important preventive measure to realize sustainable development. Although a great expansion of SEA effectiveness researches in the past 10 years, no study statistically reviews how frequently the evaluation criteria are adopted. A meta-analysis is conducted with 68 academic papers published from 2009 to 2019, with 41 articles related to the international context and 27 to China. After figuring out the number of times each criterion is mentioned, the adoption frequency is calculated, and a comparison is made between the Chinese and international contexts. The result shows that the criteria adopted in studies evaluating China's SEA are largely accordant with those used to evaluate international SEA. Both of them discuss more on procedural and contextual effectiveness. The distribution of substantive and normative effectiveness evaluation criteria resembles the most. However, the significant differences lie in the criteria of assessment methods and communication, which are all the drawbacks influencing SEA implementation in China. Besides, the problems of China's SEA pointed out by past scholars are statistically analyzed. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.