Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Building basic infrastructures or public projects, such as garbage treatment center or high ways, are building blocks of urban development and local public service provision. Citizens form perceptions towards these projects and involve into the policy process accordingly. Existing literatures have shown significant causal effect relationships between individual knowledge, risk awareness, trust to agency and public perception formation. Yet, less has been explored on how citizen participate into policy process based on their different perceptions towards a project.

This research firstly argues that economic benefits as well as environmental impacts of different type of projects may jointly form a significant influence towards public perception formation, which may predict public perception in a more accurate way. Based on public perception prediction, this research further tries to explore the causal relationship between public perception and the way the common public influence policy process, ranging from attending formal policy publicity meeting to petition and riots. We argue that public perception, trust to public agency, personal characteristics, and project type all shed lights on the way people prefer to influence policy process. 

This paper surveys 2400 residents in Beijing, Hangzhou, Baoding and Lanzhou in China for their perceptions towards four types of public projects: highway construction, industrial facilities, waste treatment center, and low rent housing.  Preliminary analysis shows that there are significant differences in public perception with regarding to different projects: social economic benefits positively influence public perception towards industrial facilities as well as basic infrastructures, while leaves no statistically significant influence over low rent housing and waste treatment center. Environment concerns show significant influence to all projects except for high way construction. Trust to government agencies not only influences public perception formation towards projects such as low rent housing and high way construction, but also influences the way public participate.

This research implies that government should choose policy instruments according to features of public projects by checking what are real determinants for perception formation. Meanwhile, government should also design different public participation mechanisms considering both the public perception and features of the project.