Does Digital Technology Increase Public Participation? Evidence from a Natural Experiment and Big Data Analyses in China

Does information technology mobilize citizens to participate in civic affairs, and if so, how? This paper investigates the impact of introducing an e-participatory budgeting platform in a large Chinese municipality where over 21 million residents collectively allocate 1.4 billion of public funds. By analyzing 889605 anonymous users’ digital traces, together with two rounds of survey over 6000 respondents before and after the launch of the e-platform, we reveal the causal effect of the e-access on civic participation and the empowerment mechanism. After one-year usage of the e-platform, the likelihood of public participation increased by 7.6%. This effect is more pronounced among disadvantaged groups, such as the middle-aged group and those with lower levels of education. Public perceptions of digital empowerment play a significant mediating role. The promotion of "e-platform" will enhance the public’s perception of empowerment to a greater extent and are positively associated with their actual behavior of public participation. In addition, after 1 year of usage of e-platform, public satisfaction with the distribution of the budget increased by 22.6%. By analyzing the big data, we further find that the digital platform has largely stimulated participation in budget-making. More than 3.1 million users have registered for the platform over a year, which accounted for over 20% of the entire population. Daily active users range from 10,000 to 130,000, depending on different phases of budgeting. Users were significantly more inclined to submit, view, or vote on proposals than engage in other phases of the budgeting process, which accounted for 82.9% of the entire user's digital traces. We also analyze the effect of public participation on the budgeting decision using text analysis and find that public demands for improvement of the living environment are the highest, and demands for environmental improvement and literacy improvement were most likely to be endorsed by the local government. Last but not least, we found that 51% of the matched users only registered the app without leaving any behavioral footprint. On average, users logged into the system 11.8 times over a year, ranging from 0 to 505 times. Regression analyses show that those who highly evaluated the e-platform or highly perceived technical privacy security were significantly more likely to participate online. The depth of participation, measured by the frequency of logging into the system, was influenced by the user’s perceived participation capacities and government responsiveness. Taken together, results from the natural experiment and big data analyses show that the promotion of a digital participation platform has significantly increased people’s willingness and behaviors toward civic participation, although the effect varies by age, gender, and educational level. Utilizing digital platforms to participate in budgeting-making has increased people’s perceptions of digital empowerment in various aspects, which necessarily translates into wider public participation and satisfaction. Evaluation of the technology's usability and safety determines whether the public participates online. Participation capacity and government responsiveness are important factors in determining the depth of public participation. This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the promotion of public engagement via technological advancement.