Keywords: Citizen participation; urban planning; stated choice experiment; participatory processes
Urban planning is a complex process which requires the support of the public. Citizen participation aims
to retrieve the interests of the public at an early stage of the urban planning process to create support
for decisions and it has the potential to create more innovative, effective and efficient plans. In the past
years, a broad range of (digital) participatory approaches have been developed to engage citizens in
the decision-making process. However, it remains unknown how citizens evaluate these participatory
approaches. This study examines citizens’ preferences for participation processes in urban planning and
how characteristics of such processes influence their preferences. A stated choice experiment was
conducted to study the impact of the channel, the level of involvement, collective or individual
participation, the frequency of involvement and the time requirement of the participation process and
the feedback that is given afterwards on citizens’ evaluation of participatory processes. Furthermore,
it was examined how the topic and the scale of the urban planning project influenced citizens’
preferences. Lastly, the influence of different personal characteristics was analyzed by exploring if
different groups of individuals with similar preferences could be identified. The results show that people
want incidental and short participation processes with elaborate feedback after the process. In
addition, people prefer to individually give advice about urban planning projects. These effects are
dependent on the context. Moreover, two different types of participants were identified with distinct
personal characteristics. The research findings provide insight into how citizens can best be engaged
within urban planning and can be used as guidelines for municipal participation policies.