Ecology projects and participatory budgeting: enhancing citizens

Gherghina, S. and Tap, P. (2021) Ecology projects and participatory budgeting: enhancing citizens. Sustainability, 13(19), 10561. (doi: 10.3390/su131910561)

Abstract

In contemporary times, a large number of ecology projects are put on the public agenda through participatory budgeting. There is variation in the support they receive from citizens, but until now we have not known what drives this support. This article aims to identify the factors that could determine the support for ecology projects in participatory budgeting. It includes all 36 projects on ecology, which passed the technical eligibility check, submitted to the participatory budgeting in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) between 2017 and 2019. We use quantitative analysis to test the extent to which five project characteristics have an effect on the public support for the ecology projects: the requested budget, the type of project, the number of arguments, the use of jargon, and images and videos in addition to text descriptions. The results show that citizens take the environmental matters seriously and do not vote for schematic projects that are limited in scope and which have limited contribution to the general welfare.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Gherghina, Dr Sergiu

Creator Roles

Gherghina, S.: Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing, Visualization, Project administration

• Authors: Gherghina, S., and Tap, P.
• College/School: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Politics
• Journal Name: Sustainability
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2071-1050
• ISSN (Online): 2071-1050
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2021 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Sustainability 13(19):10561
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License