Public participation in crisis policymaking. How 30,000 Dutch citizens advised their government on relaxing COVID-19 lockdown measures

  1. Niek Mouter
  2. Jose Ignacio Hernandez
  3. Anatol Valerian Itten

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, governments took unprecedented measures to curb the spread of the virus. Public participation in decisions regarding (the relaxation of) these measures has been notably absent, despite being recommended in the literature. Here, as one of the exceptions, we report the results of 30,000 citizens advising the government on eight different possibilities for relaxing lockdown measures in the Netherlands. By making use of the novel method Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE), participants were asked to recommend which out of the eight options they prefer to be relaxed. Participants received information regarding the societal impacts of each relaxation option, such as the impact of the option on the healthcare system. The results of the PVE informed policymakers about people’s preferences regarding (the impacts of) the relaxation options. For instance, we established that participants assign an equal value to a reduction of 100 deaths among citizens younger than 70 years and a reduction of 168 deaths among citizens older than 70 years. We show how these preferences can be used to rank options in terms of desirability. Citizens advised to relax lockdown measures, but not to the point at which the healthcare system becomes heavily overloaded. We found wide support for prioritising the re-opening of contact professions. Conversely, participants disfavoured options to relax restrictions for specific groups of citizens as they found it important that decisions lead to “unity” and not to “division”. 80% of the participants state that PVE is a good method to let citizens participate in government decision-making on relaxing lockdown measures. Participants felt that they could express a nuanced opinion, communicate arguments, and appreciated the opportunity to evaluate relaxation options in comparison to each other while being informed about the consequences of each option. This increased their awareness of the dilemmas the government faces.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0250614
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.09.20228718: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    A secondary objective of this paper is to improve understanding towards the strengths and weaknesses of PVE in terms of involving citizens in crisis policymaking. 6.1 Main findings: Our results show that the majority of the participants in the PVE advised the government to relax lockdown measures, but not to the point at which the healthcare system becomes heavily overloaded. Participants in the ‘open PVE’ were inclined to support a somewhat more extensive relaxation of lockdown measures than the average Dutch citizen (participants in the representative PVE). From the choices respondents made in the PVE, we were able to infer the implicit trade-offs made by Dutch citizens between impacts of relaxation options. For instance, we find that a reduction of 100 deaths of persons below the age of 70 years and the reduction of 168 deaths of citizens older than 70 years are equally attractive. There is wide support among participants for re-opening contact professions and our results show that this option is popular in all segments of Dutch society. Conversely, we found little support for policy options that would relax restrictions for one specific group of citizens. The options “All restrictions lifted in Northern provinces” and “All restrictions lifted for people with immunity” can count on little support among the Dutch population at large. The low support for the option “All restrictions lifted in Northern provinces” is at odds with the message of a number of scientists who advoc...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.09.20228718v1 on medRxiv