Baluta, Bianca (2025) Trust the Process? – Investigating Citizen Participation, Trust, Policy and Process Acceptability in a Romanian context. Master thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
Climate policy implementation is an important tool for adapting to and mitigating climate change. For its success, it is important that the public supports the policies and believes that their development is fair. This warrants a greater understanding of the factors and mechanisms behind policy and process acceptability. This study explored, through an experimental design, whether citizen participation in policy development affects policy and process acceptability via trust as a mediator. Romanian participants (n = 95) completed an online questionnaire in which citizen participation was manipulated to either be present or absent in the policy development process. Citizen participation did not significantly affect either policy nor process acceptability, and trust did not mediate the relationship. Trust was, however, a significant predictor of both process and policy acceptability. It was thus concluded that citizen participation, in contexts characterized by low quality of government, may not affect trust or policy or process acceptability. Given the limited scope of this study, more research with more diverse samples and different framings of citizen participation could help solidify these conclusions.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Master) |
|---|---|
| Supervisor name: | Eichholtzer, A.C. |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route/Track: | Environmental Psychology (EP) [Master Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 23 Jul 2025 10:38 |
| Last Modified: | 23 Jul 2025 10:38 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/5711 |
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