Participatory budgeting and loss aversion: experimental evidence from China

Participatory budgeting (PB) has been widely studied as a strategy to enhance civic engagement and strengthen local governance, yet citizens often remain reluctant to engage in PB activities. Drawing on Brenner et al. (2007), we manipulate two dimensions of loss aversion - valence and possession - to to examine their influence on citizens’ willingness to participate. Results show that both forms of loss aversion affect participation willingness, although in-person meetings are harder to motivate than remote participation. Moreover, willingness to participate in person is higher when citizens are randomly selected by the government rather than elected by residents.