Citizen involvement in local sustainability policymaking: an in-depth analysis of staff activities and motivations

Local governments have taken an active role in climate change policymaking and have filled in gaps from the national and state levels in the USA. However, even with the growing scholarly interest in urban climate policymaking, there is still a lot that scholars do not understand about it. The current research project seeks to provide a deeper investigation into how municipalities interact with their citizens in sustainability and climate change policymaking. It further analyzes the specific ways that citizens are included in climate policymaking. To examine these questions, the research uses a mixed methods approach, combining survey and interview data. Findings reveal that municipal characteristics are related to citizen involvement around climate change, but that there are also specific motivations for how local governments interact with their citizens, particularly related to increasing citizen buy-in and diversity. The research provides implications for how local governments conceptualize citizen involvement for sustainability policymaking and how they might approach the issue in the future.