Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Citizen support is an essential and often overlooked aspect of infrastructure development (Dedring 2015). Public opposition to public works projects can derail construction deadlines; escalating development costs or even canceling well-intentioned public projects. The issue is all the more important when public-private partnerships are used in infrastructure development (P3) – an innovative contacting method for transferring technical and financial risk from public to private partners (Boyer, Van Slyke, and Rogers 2016, Chen, Hubbard, and Liao 2013). Due to the potential for leveraging private finance in P3’s, state and local governments are turning to P3’s to address issues of traffic congestion and infrastructure maintenance (Geddes and Wagner 2013, ASCE 2017). Despite potential citizen resistance to P3’s, there is little information on public preferences for citizen engagement in this context. This study integrates literature from public opinion, citizen engagement, and public-private partnerships to ask two research questions: What Are Citizen Attitudes Towards P3’s In the U.S.? and How Does Experience with Particular Citizen Engagement Programs Affect their Attitudes?

To answer this study’s research questions, we analyzed survey data from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). The authors purchased and designed twenty-three survey items related to citizen engagement and public-private partnerships (P3’s) within the broader survey. The survey was administered by YouGov-Polimetrix to a sample of U.S. adults with a demographic makeup similar to respondents of the 2008 U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (N=1,000). The data was analyzed through ordered logistic regressions, in order to determine the extent that respondent familiarity with particular approaches to citizen engagement (press releases, public meetings, etc.) predicted their attitudes towards P3’s. This analytical method allowed us to examine how particular approaches to citizen engagement affected respondent attitudes towards P3’s.

The results suggest that respondent familiarity with public meetings, social media postings, and the publication of performance-related information improved their attitudes towards P3’s. The results provide evidence to guide public policy managers in designing citizen engagement for P3’s. The results also provide theoretical guidance on the study of citizen engagement by providing a citizen perspective on the design of such programs. Specifically, the results suggest that respondents value opportunities for expressing their voice (two-way forms of participation) more than avenues for simply learning about projects (one-way forms of participation).

ASCE. 2017. "2017 Infrastructure Report Card." American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE) Accessed February 15. http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/.

Boyer, Eric J., David M. Van Slyke, and Juan D. Rogers. 2016. "An Empirical Examination of Public Involvement in Public-Private Partnerships: Qualifying the Benefits of Public Involvement in Ppps." Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 26 (1):45-61.

Chen, Cheng, Michael Hubbard, and Chun-Sung Liao. 2013. "When Public-Private Partnerships Fail: Analysing Citizen Engagement in Public-Private Partnerships - Cases from Taiwan and China." Public Management Review 15 (6):839-857.

Dedring, Isabel. 2015. E before I: Why Engagement Needs to Come First in Planning Infrastructure In Global Infrastructure Inititative. London: McKinsey & Company.

Geddes, R. Richard, and Benjamin L. Wagner. 2013. "Why Do Us States Adopt Public-Private Partnership Enabling Legislation?" Journal of Urban Economics 78:30-41.