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

公民和利益攸关方参与决策已得到广泛推广，作为改善国内治理和国际发展成果并使之可持续的一种手段。例如，世界银行在社区驱动的发展方面投资了数十亿美元，强调受益者参与发展项目的决策。直接民主，特别是以参与性预算编制的形式，已经遍布地球仪。促进参与的一个动机是，通过参与与当地公益有关的决策，参与者将感到更有必要投资于维护该公益。反过来，公共产品如果得到良好的维护和持续时间更长，将为社区提供更多的利益。政治理论家也提出了这样一个问题：参与是否“使公民更好”？对政策制定者来说，一个更重要的问题是：哪种参与方式能够做到这一点？本研究在一个发展中国家的一个县评估了参与机制对行为结果的影响。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式机构设计提供了信息;目前有11，000多个参与式预算编制方案，而且这些方案的扩展速度远远超过证据所能跟上的速度。因此，本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时立即有用。本研究使用随机对照试验（RCT）来评估共同参与过程对个人投资当地公共产品（如水井、诊所或太阳能电池阵列）意愿的影响。该随机对照试验在90个社区进行，研究人员为所有村庄提供当地公共产品。在为每个社区选择商品的方法中，随机选择了（a）通过协商进行偏好聚集、（B）通过公开会议投票进行偏好聚集、（c）通过协商讨论达成共识的方法。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。研究人员在一年后返回，以衡量公共利益的状况以及参与者的最新态度和行为。然后，研究人员利用随机分配会议规则和随机选择参与者的策略，比较不同空间和时间的村庄，以确定决策过程对参与者选择和维护公共利益的影响。因此，这项研究为未来的项目设计和参与机构的投资提供了严格的证据。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

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.