IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i17p9852-d627583.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Importance of Context and the Effect of Information and Deliberation on Opinion Change Regarding Environmental Issues in Citizens’ Juries

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew G.H. Thompson

    (School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, 15a George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD, UK)

  • Oliver Escobar

    (School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, 15a George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD, UK)

  • Jennifer J. Roberts

    (Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Strathclyde, 75 Montrose Street, Glasgow G1 1XJ, UK)

  • Stephen Elstub

    (School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Henry Daysh Building, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK)

  • Niccole M. Pamphilis

    (School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, Adam Smith Building, Bute Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RT, UK)

Abstract

Citizens’ juries have become a popular method for engaging citizens in deliberation about complex public policy issues, such as climate action and sustainable development. Empirical evidence routinely indicates that jurors change their minds throughout the process. What is less clear is when and why this occurs and whether the causes are consistent across juries that consider the same topic but are situated within different contexts. We present evidence of opinion change in citizens’ juries through a natural experiment, contrasting three local contexts of onshore windfarm development in Scotland; viz. existing, planned, and absent. Jurors’ individual opinions of climate change, wind energy, and windfarms were measured through questionnaires at four time points: the start, following information-giving, reflection, and deliberation. Statistical examination of jurors’ responses, through paired sample t -tests, Wilcoxon sign-tests, and Generalised Least Squares regression, reveals to what extent substantive changes were associated with different phases and locational contexts. In all three juries, opinion change occurs throughout the process, on different topics, and to different degrees. While the information phase consistently influences jurors’ opinions the most, jury composition affects the magnitude and direction of opinion change, with outcomes contingent on contexts. Our findings are important for informing how mini-publics are designed and used to inform environmental policy-making at different scales.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew G.H. Thompson & Oliver Escobar & Jennifer J. Roberts & Stephen Elstub & Niccole M. Pamphilis, 2021. "The Importance of Context and the Effect of Information and Deliberation on Opinion Change Regarding Environmental Issues in Citizens’ Juries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(17), pages 1-21, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:17:p:9852-:d:627583
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/17/9852/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/17/9852/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Katariina Kulha & Mikko Leino & Maija Setälä & Maija Jäske & Staffan Himmelroos, 2021. "For the Sake of the Future: Can Democratic Deliberation Help Thinking and Caring about Future Generations?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-13, May.
    2. Freese, Jeremy & Peterson, David, 2017. "Replication in Social Science," SocArXiv 5bck9, Center for Open Science.
    3. Kim Strandberg & Kim Backström & Janne Berg & Thomas Karv, 2021. "Democratically Sustainable Local Development? The Outcomes of Mixed Deliberation on a Municipal Merger on Participants’ Social Trust, Political Trust, and Political Efficacy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-17, June.
    4. Peter Strachan & David Lal, 2004. "Wind Energy Policy, Planning and Management Practice in the UK: Hot Air or a Gathering Storm?," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(5), pages 549-569.
    5. Damien French & Michael Laver, 2009. "Participation Bias, Durable Opinion Shifts and Sabotage through Withdrawal in Citizens' Juries," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57, pages 422-450, June.
    6. Robert E. Goodin & Simon J. Niemeyer, 2003. "When Does Deliberation Begin? Internal Reflection versus Public Discussion in Deliberative Democracy," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 51, pages 627-649, December.
    7. Wustenhagen, Rolf & Wolsink, Maarten & Burer, Mary Jean, 2007. "Social acceptance of renewable energy innovation: An introduction to the concept," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 2683-2691, May.
    8. Charles Warren & Carolyn Lumsden & Simone O'Dowd & Richard Birnie, 2005. "'Green On Green': Public perceptions of wind power in Scotland and Ireland," Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(6), pages 853-875.
    9. Luskin, Robert C. & Fishkin, James S. & Jowell, Roger, 2002. "Considered Opinions: Deliberative Polling in Britain," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(3), pages 455-487, July.
    10. Farrar, Cynthia & Fishkin, James S. & Green, Donald P. & List, Christian & Luskin, Robert C. & Levy Paluck, Elizabeth, 2010. "Disaggregating Deliberation’s Effects: An Experiment within a Deliberative Poll," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 40(2), pages 333-347, April.
    11. Langer, Katharina & Decker, Thomas & Menrad, Klaus, 2017. "Public participation in wind energy projects located in Germany: Which form of participation is the key to acceptance?," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 63-73.
    12. Robert E. Goodin & Simon J. Niemeyer, 2003. "When Does Deliberation Begin? Internal Reflection versus Public Discussion in Deliberative Democracy," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 51(4), pages 627-649, December.
    13. Baccaro, Lucio & Bächtiger, André & Deville, Marion, 2016. "Small Differences that Matter: The Impact of Discussion Modalities on Deliberative Outcomes," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(3), pages 551-566, July.
    14. Damien French & Michael Laver, 2009. "Participation Bias, Durable Opinion Shifts and Sabotage through Withdrawal in Citizens' Juries," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(2), pages 422-450, June.
    15. Barabas, Jason, 2004. "How Deliberation Affects Policy Opinions," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(4), pages 687-701, November.
    16. Wolsink, Maarten, 2007. "Planning of renewables schemes: Deliberative and fair decision-making on landscape issues instead of reproachful accusations of non-cooperation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 2692-2704, May.
    17. Gerber, Marlène & Bächtiger, André & Shikano, Susumu & Reber, Simon & Rohr, Samuel, 2018. "Deliberative Abilities and Influence in a Transnational Deliberative Poll (EuroPolis)," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(4), pages 1093-1118, October.
    18. Sanders, David, 2012. "The Effects of Deliberative Polling in an EU-wide Experiment: Five Mechanisms in Search of an Explanation," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 42(3), pages 617-640, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schoon, Rebecca & Chi, Chunhuei, 2022. "Integrating Citizens Juries and Discrete Choice Experiments: Methodological issues in the measurement of public values in healthcare priority setting," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).
    2. Mikko Leino & Katariina Kulha & Maija Setälä & Juha Ylisalo, 2022. "Expert hearings in mini-publics: How does the field of expertise influence deliberation and its outcomes?," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 55(3), pages 429-450, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Eltham, Douglas C. & Harrison, Gareth P. & Allen, Simon J., 2008. "Change in public attitudes towards a Cornish wind farm: Implications for planning," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 23-33, January.
    2. Shen, Shiran Victoria & Cain, Bruce E. & Hui, Iris, 2019. "Public receptivity in China towards wind energy generators: A survey experimental approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 619-627.
    3. Marlène Gerber & André Bächtiger & Irena Fiket & Marco Steenbergen & Jürg Steiner, 2014. "Deliberative and non-deliberative persuasion: Mechanisms of opinion formation in EuroPolis," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(3), pages 410-429, September.
    4. Haggett, Claire, 2011. "Understanding public responses to offshore wind power," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 503-510, February.
    5. Harper, Michael & Anderson, Ben & James, Patrick A.B. & Bahaj, AbuBakr S., 2019. "Onshore wind and the likelihood of planning acceptance: Learning from a Great Britain context," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 954-966.
    6. Nicole Curato & Marit Böker, 2016. "Linking mini-publics to the deliberative system: a research agenda," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 49(2), pages 173-190, June.
    7. Lombard, Andrea & Ferreira, Sanette, 2014. "Residents' attitudes to proposed wind farms in the West Coast region of South Africa: A social perspective from the South," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 390-399.
    8. Choi, Jihye & Kim, Justine Jihyun & Lee, Jongsu, 2024. "Public willingness to pay for mitigating local conflicts over the construction of renewable energy facilities: A contingent valuation study in South Korea," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    9. Vuichard, Pascal & Stauch, Alexander & Wüstenhagen, Rolf, 2021. "Keep it local and low-key: Social acceptance of alpine solar power projects," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    10. Zerrahn, Alexander, 2017. "Wind Power and Externalities," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 245-260.
    11. Agterbosch, Susanne & Meertens, Ree M. & Vermeulen, Walter J.V., 2009. "The relative importance of social and institutional conditions in the planning of wind power projects," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 393-405, February.
    12. Kalkbrenner, Bernhard J. & Yonezawa, Koichi & Roosen, Jutta, 2017. "Consumer preferences for electricity tariffs: Does proximity matter?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 413-424.
    13. Beauson, J. & Laurent, A. & Rudolph, D.P. & Pagh Jensen, J., 2022. "The complex end-of-life of wind turbine blades: A review of the European context," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    14. Anna Dóra Sæþórsdóttir & Margrét Wendt & Edita Tverijonaite, 2021. "Wealth of Wind and Visitors: Tourist Industry Attitudes towards Wind Energy Development in Iceland," Land, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-19, June.
    15. Bidwell, David, 2013. "The role of values in public beliefs and attitudes towards commercial wind energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 189-199.
    16. Feurtey, Évariste & Ilinca, Adrian & Sakout, Anas & Saucier, Carol, 2016. "Institutional factors influencing strategic decision-making in energy policy; a case study of wind energy in France and Quebec (Canada)," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 1455-1470.
    17. Mulvaney, Kate K. & Woodson, Patrick & Prokopy, Linda Stalker, 2013. "A tale of three counties: Understanding wind development in the rural Midwestern United States," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 322-330.
    18. Bergek, Anna, 2010. "Levelling the playing field? The influence of national wind power planning instruments on conflicts of interests in a Swedish county," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 2357-2369, May.
    19. Guo, Yue & Ru, Peng & Su, Jun & Anadon, Laura Diaz, 2015. "Not in my backyard, but not far away from me: Local acceptance of wind power in China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 722-733.
    20. Langer, Katharina & Decker, Thomas & Roosen, Jutta & Menrad, Klaus, 2016. "A qualitative analysis to understand the acceptance of wind energy in Bavaria," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 248-259.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:17:p:9852-:d:627583. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.