Freier, Carolin (2024) How Do Values and Past Participation Processes Influence People’s Willingness to Participate in Decision-Making on Renewable Energies? An Investigation of Public Participation on the Concrete Level. Master thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
Including citizens into political decision-making by means of public participation can lead to more acceptable energy policies. However, opponents of local energy projects were found to be more willing to participate and therefore to be overrepresented in corresponding decision-making processes compared to its supporters. The present study investigated whether a more balanced representation of supporters and opponents in local energy-related decision-making can be achieved by emphasizing certain characteristics of a previous decision-making process on the general sustainability of a country. Participants of an online experiment (N = 117) were presented with one of three scenarios manipulated by whether the previous decision-making process entailed public participation and a debate of people’s values. Unexpectedly, opponents were not found to be more willing to participate than supporters in any of the scenarios. In line with the hypothesis, when public participation and a value debate were present in the previous decision-making process, neither opponents nor supporters were more willing to participate. Surprisingly, supporters were more willing to participate when there was public participation but when there was no value debate before. Based on the present study, supporters might thus be engaged by emphasizing public participation in previous, more general decisions but without emphasizing values. As the original finding of opponents being more willing to participate was observable only as a nonsignificant trend, having no dominant group in the value condition cannot be clearly attributed to the emphasis of values. Future research should embed the present approach of a scenario study into the context of a real decision-making process to further investigate whether this pattern of findings can be replicated in a significant manner.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Perlaviciute, G. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | Environmental Psychology (EP) [Master Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 30 Jul 2024 07:06 |
| Last Modified: | 30 Jul 2024 07:06 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/4171 |
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