The Impact of Public Participation in DFPP Collaborative Projects: The inclusion of public participation in decision-making processes

Abstract

In 2017, the new water safety norms were changed. This resulted in a new goal of the Dutch Flood Protection Program (DFFP) to reinforces all the dikes by the year 2050. Consistent with this, public participation in decision-making has become more relevant and essential. However, it remains unclear how to measure the effectiveness of their involvement in decision-making. Hence, this research investigated which characteristics of public participation influenced the preferred alternative during the dike reinforcement projects. The first step was to combine the theories of Emerson et al. (2012) and Newig et al. (2018) into a conceptual model. Further, this conceptual model was included and tested within the SPSS program by using multiple regression analysis. It became clear that appointed internal experts have an influence on this process. Thus, the research continued to discover how this might be expressed. Therefore, a case study for the dike-reinforcement IJsseldijk Zwolle-Olst was conducted. By using the conceptual model again it was indicated that appointed internal experts have an influence by sharing their views and ideas with the public participants, imparted local knowledge, mobilized and enabled public participants with divergent backgrounds and by gaining the public participants’ trust.