Collaborative Research: Collective decision making & local public good provision: Experimental Evidence

广泛促进公民和利益攸关方参与决策，将其作为改善国内治理和国际发展的可持续成果的一种手段。例如，世界银行在社区驱动的发展方面投资了数十亿美元，强调受益者参与围绕发展项目的决策。直接民主，特别是以参与式预算的形式，已经在全球范围内蔓延。促进参与的一个动机是，通过参与与地方公共利益相关的决策，参与者将感到更有必要投资于维护该利益。反过来，如果公共产品维护得好，持续时间更长，就会为社会带来更多好处。政治理论家也提出了这样一个问题：参与“会让公民变得更好吗？”对于政策制定者来说，一个更重要的问题是：哪些类型的参与能够做到这一点？本研究评估了参与机制对发展中国家某一国家行为结果的影响。这项研究的结果为该国、该大陆其他国家和世界各地正在进行的参与性机构的设计提供了信息；有11,000多个参与性预算方案和方案的扩张速度远远快于证据所能跟上的步伐。因此，这项研究的结果对政府和参与式机构的倡导者在设计、采用和扩大公众参与以追求发展方面立即有用。研究使用随机对照试验(RCT)来评估共同参与式过程对个人投资当地公共产品的意愿的影响，如水井、卫生诊所或太阳能电池板。RCT在90个社区进行，研究人员为所有村庄提供当地公共产品。为每个社区选择商品的方法被随机分配为：(A)通过协商收集偏好，(B)通过公开会议投票收集偏好，或(C)通过协商讨论建立共识。研究小组随机招募村民参加这些会议，并在会议前后调查他们对参与和发展项目的态度和行为。一年后，研究人员回来测量公共物品的状态以及参与者最新的态度和行为。然后，研究人员利用他们的随机分配会议规则和随机选择参与者的策略来比较不同空间和时间上的村庄，以确定决策过程对参与者选择和维护公共产品的影响。因此，这项研究为未来的项目设计和对参与式机构的发展投资提供了严格的证据。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Participation in decision making by citizens and stakeholders has been widely promoted as a means to improved and sustainable outcomes in both domestic governance and international development. For example, the World Bank has invested billions of dollars in community-driven development, which emphasizes the participation of beneficiaries in decision making around development projects. Direct democracy, especially in the form of participatory budgeting, has spread across the globe. One motivation for promoting participation is the idea that by participating in decision making related to a local public good, participants will feel more compelled to invest in the maintenance of that good. In turn, public goods will provide more benefit to the community if they are well-maintained and last longer. Political theorists, too, have posed the question: does participation “make better citizens?” An even more important question for policy makers is: which kinds of participation manage to do so? This research evaluates the influence of participatory mechanisms on behavioral outcomes in one county in a developing country. The results of the study inform the ongoing design of participatory institutions in that country, other countries on that continent, and around the world; there are more than 11,000 participatory budgeting programs and programs are expanding far more quickly than evidence can keep pace. The results of this study thus are immediately useful to governments and advocates of participatory institutions as they design, adopt, and expand public participation in pursuit of development.The research uses a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the impact of common participatory processes on individual willingness to invest in local public goods, such as a well, a health clinic, or solar array. The RCT takes place in 90 communities, where the researchers provide all villages with a local public good. The method of selecting a good for each community is randomly assigned to involve either: (a) preference aggregation through consultation, (b) preference aggregation through voting at a public meeting, or (c) consensus-building through deliberative discussion.The research team randomly recruits villagers to attend these meetings and surveys them on their attitudes and behaviors surrounding participation and development projects before and after the meetings. The researchers return 1 year later to measure the state of the public good and the participants’ updated attitudes and behaviors. The researchers then leverage their strategy of random assignment of meeting rules and random selection of participants to compare villages across space and over time to identify the effects of the decision-making process on participants’ selection and maintenance of the public good. This study thus provides rigorous evidence to inform future program design and investment in participatory institutions for development.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.