Citizen Participation and Behavior Change

Challenges

We are facing several powerful changes, including climate change, demographic shifts, and urbanization. To deal with them constructively and sustainably, our societies and individual behavior will have to change rapidly and profoundly in the coming decades. The major challenges lie in shaping these changes constructively and collaboratively and in helping people to cope with them. These are two sides of the same coin – and digital processes and tools can make a significant contribution to both.

Key topics

1. Participatory shaping of social change

The direct involvement (participation) of citizens in planning and deliberative decision-making is increasingly recognized as a complementary approach to traditional democratic processes.

Digital tools can enhance the quality of existing forms of participation.
Crucially, they also enable completely new qualities in the implementation of participatory and democratic processes: they can provide the technological basis for fundamentally new forms of democratic decision-making.

2. Support for individual transformation

Adequate settings and rules for behavior can facilitate ecologically and socially sustainable development. Even if these conditions for behavior have been agreed through democratic processes and with the participation of those affected, they may mean serious changes to individual behavior. Digital tools can facilitate implementation at an individual level – be it in supporting individual adaptation and shaping of the necessary framework conditions for sustainable development (e.g. use as an instrument for education for sustainable development, individual assistance in implementation in everyday life) or broader participation in leisure and culture (e.g. virtual tourism).

Research Question

The first essential question is how the digital tools that are useful for profound change can be designed and how they can be used in a target-oriented way by society and individuals (design aspect). It is also necessary to scientifically investigate their effectiveness and where/how their use achieves the most significant effects (evaluation aspect).

Research approaches and methods

Approaches from social and environmental psychology, urban and spatial sociology, political science, attitude and acceptance research, technology assessment, scenario analysis, participation research, evaluation research, media usage research, gamification

Further information

Projects

aktuelle Projekte

OLGA, ReGerecht, EU-Fairplay, Game4Change

abgeschlossene Projekte

U_CODE, HistStadt4D

Selected publications

Hofmann, M., Münster, S., & Noennig, J. R. (2020). A theoretical framework for the evaluation of massive digital participation systems in urban planning. Journal of Geovisualization and Spatial Analysis, 4(3), doi: 10/ggd8hh

Frick, V., Homburg, A., Röderer, K., & Hofmann, M. (2021). Psychologie der digitalen Umwelt: Digitalisierung, Umweltschutz und Umweltgestaltung. Umweltpsychologie, 25(1), 4–18

Rambow, R., Moczek, N., & Hofmann, M. (2014). Aneignung, Teilhabe, Wohlbefinden -- Städtische Räume und ihre Nutzung. Umweltpsychologie, 18(2), 3–9

Nanz, P., Fritsche, M., Isaak, A., Hofmann, M., & Lüdemann, M. (2010). Verfahren und Methoden der Bürgerbeteiligung. In: D. Hierlemann & A. Wohlfarth (Eds.), Politik beleben, Bürger beteiligen: Charakteristika neuer Beteiligungsmodelle, (pp. 6–49). Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung.

Topics for qualification work

Improving traditional participation with digital tools

How can digital technologies improve established, analog participation processes (e.g. by making them less accessible) or support innovative processes (e.g. systemic consensus)? Why do they work better/worse?
How can technologies help people reach the highest possible level on the ladder of participation and thus participate in "real" decision-making processes? What effects could this have on the acceptance of change processes in the population (e.g. in terms of life satisfaction, self-efficacy)?
How can digital technologies help to make participatory decision-making processes and their results transparent (especially for those people who are affected by them)?
What skills are needed to take part in digital participation processes? How should digital participation technologies be conceived and designed so that there is no need for mediation or empowerment concepts for their use in the first place?

New forms of participation made possible by digital technologies

How can (existing) digital technologies enable completely new forms of participation? What new forms could these be?
Which new technologies (computer-brain interfaces, IoT, ...) could enable participation in the future, and how? How can participation change qualitatively and quantitatively as a result?
How can digital technologies for participation represent a further development of democracy (away from voting once every X years or being able to decide yes/no in a referendum, towards permanent involvement in decision-making processes)?
Possible fundamental "upgrades" of democracy must be democratically organized. However, the current political decision-makers have little incentive to do so. Therefore: How can this be dealt with from the outset? How can these stakeholders be involved from the outset?

Collective and individual behavioral change

Fundamentally, why do the framework conditions make it difficult to behave sustainably? What are the psychological mechanisms behind this?
How can digital tools help people to change their behavior? Which mechanisms of action (e.g. changing habits, increasing motivation to change behavior, gamification) are relevant for which classes of behavior?
Where does this strategy reach its limits? What are the limits? What would be necessary to overcome them in the future?
How can digital tools be used to measure behavior change (e.g. non-reactive)?

Research group leader

Head of research group

Dr. rer. nat. Mathias Hofmann Dipl.-Psych.

Science and grant proposal coordination

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