Guidance experiments on residents’ participation in decision-making activities related to urban settlement regeneration in China

In China, how to guide residents on actively participating in decision-making activities related to urban settlement regeneration is critical and must be addressed. Referring to the theory of planned behavior (TPB), combined with the characteristics of regeneration decision-making, the external environmental factors affecting residents’ participation in such decision-making activities, through impacting psychological environmental factors, were determined by establishing the structural equation model (SEM) and conducting a survey. The guidance measures of enhancing external pressure and providing regeneration information were selected. Participation guidance experiments were designed, and the typical communities located in the development zone and city center of Harbin, China were selected as the experiment regions. Forty-eight subjects were screened in each experimental region and divided into six groups; three participated in the experiments regarding the leading role of representatives, enhancing communication, and incentives, and three in the experiments on policy advocacy, regeneration technology popularization, and regeneration case sharing. Guidance measures’ effects for introversion or extraversion, regardless of region are, from large to small, incentives, regeneration case sharing, leading role of representatives, enhancing communication, policy advocacy and regeneration technology popularization. There are significant differences in the effects of enhancing external pressure measures between different personalities, and enhancing external pressure measures are more effective for extraversion. Although the differences in the effects of providing regeneration information measures are statistically insignificant, providing such measures is more effective for introversion. The results reflect the analysis of the influencing factors. TPB application is enriched and the guidance experiments used to verify guiding measures’ effectiveness are provided. Practically-significant implications include: communities and proprietor committees should organize neighborhood-relationship to enhance community activities, with the proprietor committee solving residents’ daily problems to win authority and trust, positively guiding residents’ participation. Community staff can also understand, via daily participation, residents’ personality traits, so as to implement the above-mentioned guidance measures.