The Effects and Antecedents of Perceived Fairness in the Deliberative Process for Sustainable Citizens’ Participation

Abstract

Based on the data from Korean citizen’s deliberation experiments, we examined the effects and antecedents of perceived fairness of the deliberative process. Our empirical study tested whether the perceived fairness of the deliberative process was associated with the outcomes of deliberation (changes in civic participants’ opinions) and explored antecedents that facilitated the perceived fairness of the deliberative process. We found that perceived fairness of the deliberative process positively increased civic participants’ opinion change, information reliability, and culture of acceptance in the deliberative process cultivated the perceived fairness of deliberative process when we controlled personal orientation and characteristics (e.g., political orientation, gender, age and etc.). These results identified conditions for effectively facilitating deliberative civic engagement in the policy decision-making process.