Good public participation governance and meaningful, local, and sustainable partnerships play a vital role in addressing environmental challenges and managing natural resources in crises. Therefore, the present study aims to identify and analyze effective strategies and propellants for better and more effective participation in environmental management through a combined Q methodology in order to reveal mental patterns and provide an index of good public participation for environmental management. To represent the views and discursive experiences of expert participants in the field of environmental management, specialists from the Environmental Protection Agency and experts in this field, 7 stages of the Q methodology have been implemented, and to analyze the similarities and differences of mental perceptions, 53 Q cards have been valued in the spectrum of the diagram. Based on the method of ranking and conducting final interviews during the sorting, and the implementation of Q factor analysis, three factors or mental patterns have been revealed in the results. In this study, while identifying the first mental model as the dominant model, indexing has been done from the results of the study on public participation in environmental management. Therefore, in this study, with a non-positivist approach and based on the representation of views and considering other criteria such as standard score and specific value, 4 pivotal indicators have been compared with each other in terms of their impact on public participation in environmental management, in terms of their importance and significance, as well as their belonging to each of the mental patterns.