01555623

Component

This paper investigates how deliberative public engagement processes transform stakeholders’ understandings of complex local road transportation policy issues and their policy preferences. Scholars have argued that participants in policy deliberations gain new knowledge and perspectives, and frequently also change their own views about policy problems and solutions. The authors do not, however, have good accounts of how participants learn through deliberation. This paper research addresses that gap with a rich account, from participants’ perspectives, of how they learned through a series of deliberative dialogues about how to sustain local road systems in Beltrami County, Minnesota. Many individuals changed their position from strong opposition to strong support for selected policy options, and the group collectively moved from divergent to convergent views about a new local tax for transportation. The authors use mixed methods to analyze how the deliberative processes influenced participants to sustain or change their views, working with a combination transcripts and observations of the community meetings, surveys of attitudes before and after meetings, and follow-up interviews with participants.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADA60 Public Involvement in Transportation.

01550057

15-1286

English

15p

2015

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Attitudes; Communities; Highways; Policy making; Public opinion; Stakeholders; Taxation

Beltrami County (Minnesota)

Highways; Policy; Safety and Human Factors; I10: Economics and Administration; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-1286

PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 30 2014 12:30PM