Stakeholder e-participation in local planning: The Camargue Park case

Abstract

The goal of this study is to evaluate several features and outcomes of the e-consultation organized by the Camargue Natural Park on its management plan. To estimate the benefits of the selected Internet devices, we have compared our assessment of this e-consultation with other face-to-face participative events organized on the same management plan. Following "computermediated communication" and deliberative theories, we expected that the tested e-tools would increase the deliberative features of the stakeholder participation. Several economic and organisational benefits were also expected. Our first results confirm the organisational benefits of this e-consultation (information gain, cost of the process, etc.). Several "deliberative" benefits have also been observed (more opinion and thematic diversity without an increase of "flames"). Nevertheless, speech is apparently more concentrated than in faceto-face events, even if many "non-posters" visited the consultation site but did not post because they had "all their comments already included". © 2010 Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.