Facilitating Participation Through Online Platforms: What Do Citizens Want?

Internet platforms are frequently introduced to boost citizen involvement in political decision-making. However, while they ostensibly have similar aims, the design features of these platforms vary considerably. This is likely to affect how willing users are to contribute and thereby also how effective they will be in promoting democratic participation. For this reason, it is imperative to examine what citizens want from such digital possibilities for participation. This study examines how central design features of government participation platforms affect people’s attitudes towards their usage. While previous literature has examined what design features are prominent in existing cases or how design features affect the impact of platforms, the attitudes of respondents towards them remain unclear. This is important since these attitudes, even when not based on actual experiences, are likely to shape how the general public receive the introduction of participatory platforms and affect how likely people are to take advantage of the possibilities that such platforms offer for participation. The data come from a conjoint experiment conducted in Finland that examines the impact of seven attributes on the favourability of respondents.