Citizens' intentions to participate in governmental co-creation initiatives: Comparing three co-creation configurations

The awareness has grown that citizen participation may contribute to the quality of and support for government policies. This study focuses on citizens' intentions to take part in co-creation processes. Co-creation can be seen as an intensive type of citizen participation, involving active collaboration between government and citizens on specific policy issues. In the context of a Dutch province, we investigated citizens' intentions to participate in co-creation processes and experimentally compared the effects of three co-creation configurations (idea contest, grassroots groups, digital platform) on their intentions. Data were collected using online questionnaires (N = 354). Participants first answered general questions about their intentions to participate, and were then randomly assigned to a description of one of the configurations. Citizens' general intention to participate was related to their educational level, interest in provincial politics, perceived value of citizen participation, expected personal gratification, and perceived behavioral control. Of the three co-creation configurations, grassroots groups and digital platforms led to somewhat higher intentions to participate. An analysis of determinants per configuration shows that expected personal gratification played an important role in all three configurations. Perceived behavioral control was an additional determinant for the grassroots groups and digital platform configurations. For digital platforms, trust in sincere intentions was a third determinant.