An article by Dr Marco Wähner, a research fellow in the Research Data & Methods department, has been published in the new anthology “Sustainable Communities and Digital Participation” by the Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Weizenbaum Institute. Under the title *Social Sustainability in Climate Transformation: How Incentives Encourage Citizens to Participate in Online Consultation Processes”, he examines, together with Tobias Escher and Katharina Holec (both from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf), how digital participation processes can be strengthened in the context of climate transformation. The analysis is based on survey data from the “Citizen Involvement in Mobility Transitions (CIMT)” project.
Abstract
One challenge in the transition to climate neutrality lies in the potential conflict between environmental and social sustainability. Mobility measures that are necessary from an environmental perspective can have social repercussions that lead to greater social injustice and declining public acceptance. Against this backdrop, local authorities regularly initiate online consultation processes to survey citizens on sustainable transformation and thus involve them in the political decision-making process at an early stage. However, research shows that only a select group of citizens participates in these processes. This results in, for example, population groups with lower levels of formal education being under-represented, meaning these processes fail to do justice to the social dimension of sustainability. This article therefore addresses the question of the extent to which, on the one hand, the internet helps to mobilise the ‘unusual suspects’ and, on the other hand, which incentives – whether general or topic-specific – motivate participation.
The empirical findings of this paper show that it is still the ‘usual suspects’ who are significantly over-represented in online consultation processes. At the same time, the groups differ in terms of their motives for participation, meaning that even “unusual suspects” can be motivated to take part in the processes through the targeted promotion of issue-specific incentives, so that consultation processes promote not only environmental but also social sustainability.
Wähner, M., Escher, T., & Holec, K. (2026). Social sustainability in climate transformation: How incentives promote citizen participation in online consultation processes. In H. Riedel, A. Ullrich, Bertelsmann Stiftung, & Weizenbaum Institute (Eds.), Sustainable municipalities and digital participation: Analyses – Examples – Recommendations (1st ed., pp. 137–158). Bertelsmann Stiftung. https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/en/publications/publication/did/nachhaltige-kommunen-und-digitale-partizipation