Understanding the public participation among disadvantaged citizens: how does dynamics of policy transparency matter?

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Enhancing public participation among disadvantaged citizens poses a global challenge for the government. Previous studies revealed a positive association between policy transparency and public participation. However, how the diverse forms of policy transparency and the dynamic variation in transparency levels could affect public participation remain unclear. Using panel data from the 2015–2017 Chinese Longitudinal Urban-Rural Social Policy Support Survey, this study draws on the Dibao policy and its information publicity to investigate how policy transparency dynamics affect public participation among disadvantaged citizens. The findings indicate that policy transparency, facilitated through offline community posting and governmental website disclosures, promotes disadvantaged citizens’ public participation, with community postings exerting a more pronounced impact than website disclosures. Besides, such promoting effect is more substantial in community-based electoral participation than in ordinary community affairs involvement. Regarding the dynamic effects of varying policy transparency, the transition from transparency to opacity (removal of information publicity), significantly discourages public participation, while the impact of transitioning from opacity to transparency (introduction of information publicity) does not significantly enhance participation. This study contributes to promoting public participation among disadvantaged citizens in developing countries. Government should prioritize enhancing offline information publicity while carefully balancing privacy protection and policy transparency.