Engineering Systems and Services Department, Policy and Management, Faculty of Technology, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
Multi-Actor Systems Department, Policy and Management, Faculty of Technology, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2021 May 6;16(5):e0250614. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250614. eCollection 2021.
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.
在 COVID-19 爆发后，各国政府采取了前所未有的措施来遏制病毒的传播。尽管文献中建议公众参与有关（放宽）这些措施的决策，但实际上公众的参与度明显不足。在这里，作为一个例外，我们报告了 3 万名公民就荷兰放松封锁措施的八种不同可能性向政府提供建议的结果。通过使用新颖的参与式价值评估（PVE）方法，要求参与者建议他们更倾向于放松八种选择中的哪一种。参与者收到了有关每种放松选择对社会影响的信息，例如该选择对医疗保健系统的影响。PVE 的结果使政策制定者了解了人们对（放松选择的）影响的偏好。例如，我们确定参与者为减少 70 岁以下公民 100 例死亡和 70 岁以上公民 168 例死亡赋予相同的价值。我们展示了如何根据可取性对选项进行排名。公民建议放松封锁措施，但不要使医疗保健系统过度负担。我们发现广泛支持优先重新开放接触行业。相反，参与者不赞成为特定群体的公民放宽限制的选择，因为他们认为重要的是决策要导致“团结”而不是“分裂”。80％的参与者表示 PVE 是让公民参与政府放松封锁措施决策的好方法。参与者认为他们可以表达细致入微的意见，交流论据，并赞赏有机会在比较彼此的同时评估放松选择，同时了解每个选择的后果。这提高了他们对政府面临的困境的认识。
