Developing a Citizen Perspective of Public Participation: Identity Construction as Citizen Motivation to Participate

Abstract

Public participation affords public officials the opportunity to tap into diverse citizen knowledge that may help solve complex social problems. In order to best understand how to design effective participation, it is necessary to consider the perspectives of both public administrators and citizens; however, public administration literature has focused less on the citizen perspective. This article narrows the gap in the literature by elaborating a citizen perspective of participation and suggesting that identity plays a role in participation. It adopts a social identity approach in order to theorize how citizen identity constructed through participation is best conceptualized as a social identity, and to demonstrate how this social identity relates to citizen motivation to participate. The authors suggest that linking participation to a social identity approach elaborates a citizen perspective of participation and has value for furthering understanding of citizen-administrator collaboration.