Does citizen participation improve acceptance of a Green Deal? Evidence from choice experiments in Ukraine and Switzerland

Green Deals - policy packages aimed at streamlining climate mitigation investments - have recently been established in several countries to stay within the 1.5 °C global warming target. They are usually adopted on a national or supranational level, such as the European Green Deal, and follow a top-down approach of policymaking. Given the crucial role of social acceptance in successful energy and climate policy implementation, a stream of literature pointed out the important role of citizen co-investment and community participation. This paper focuses on two countries that are currently considering the introduction of a Green Deal, namely Switzerland and Ukraine, and investigates citizen preferences for design options to enhance community participation. The results show varying degrees of preferences for local participation: Ukrainian respondents are sensitive to local communities being involved in Green Deal-related decision-making, whereas this is less important to Swiss respondents as long as there is transparency and they have veto rights on specific projects. While respondents from both countries prefer a Green Deal to involve a diversified portfolio of renewable energy, clean transport and energy efficiency in buildings, they exhibit interesting differences with regard to their preferred funding sources and who should be eligible for Green Deal financing.