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

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.

Use of Public Opinion Data to Inform COVID-19 Policymaking

“…A Dutch language report of our study was cited in the long term COVID-19 strategy of the Dutch government" (Mouter et al 2022) [p. 4] In the other two studies, the description was either vague or limited. Mouter et al (2020) stated that "We do not know whether and how our results affected political decisions on the relaxation of lockdown measures, but it is noteworthy that the Dutch government decided on 6 May to start with the relaxation of lockdown measures for contact professions which was in line with our result that reopening contact professions would have broad support in society" (Mouter, Hernandez, and Itten 2020) [p. 28].…”

“…• a large-scale survey from the same research team gathering public views and preferences regarding eight policy options for relaxing lockdown measures in the Netherlands (n = 29,358); (Mouter, Hernandez, and Itten 2020) (Mouter 2020); and • examination of over 150,000 data rows from the Chinese social media platform Weibo with a focus on transport / lockdown policies. (Zha et al 2023) All studies reported that their approaches were generally effective and acceptable for the purpose of gathering POD to inform policymaking.…”

Patient and public engagement in decision-making regarding infectious disease outbreak management: an integrative review

“…Preferences of citizens on pandemic management were gauged, and information about consequences of their theoretical decisions was provided. 68 …”

COVID-19 and Biomedical Experts: When Epistemic Authority is (Probably) Not Enough

“…Based on the above considerations, we argue that a more inclusive conception of science is one in which experts in action make decisions based not just on epistemic soundness or efficiency but also consider the needs of communities that are larger than that of the experts themselves. These experts, in our view, should therefore be aware of the diversity of interests at stake and consider the possibility of having sometimes a non-univocal and objective evaluation of complex situations (Mouter et al 2020). This, in our view, does not mean devaluing science or reducing its role in society but rather quite the opposite.…”