Community involvement, public deliberation and environmental governance. Insights from Social Psychology

Public involvement has become a fundamental feature of the climate change policy agenda, emphasizing the need for participatory and deliberative mechanisms bringing together experts, policy-makers and community stakeholders in environmental management. The research interest in this field has grown over the years with a prevailing political approach. Nevertheless, in order to find effective strategies for the design, management and evaluation of participatory processes, the psychosocial aspects of public/stakeholder participation -remaining often on the background- deserve further attention (DevineWright, 2011). The contribution describes an ongoing project aimed to investigate the role of socio-psychological aspects of public participation -such as framing, identity processes and social representations- in shaping interaction and communication between actors within the deliberative processes. The project will investigate different case studies of public deliberation through a multi-method perspective, and different levels of analysis - social, situational and individual (Doise, 1989)-, referring to different theoretical perspectives linked together: psychosocial literature on participatory processes and deliberative democracy, the social representations' approach, the discursive and environmental psychology. Besides presenting the project, we explore what contribution the sociopsychological research can offer for a better understanding of public participation in sustainability policies.