Abstract

Governments sometimes use committees of selected volunteers to provide comment on environmental policy choices. We use a repeated choice experiment to explore how a deliberative citizen jury (DCJ) treatment affects the conservation preferences of DCJ participants who engage in a budget allocation exercise. First round choice experiment participants were invited to volunteer for one of a pair of paid DCJ sessions. Stated preference results for the DCJ participants were compared with a pseudo-control formed by matching non-participants on socioeconomic characteristics. Both preference and response heterogeneity declines for the DCJ treatment group, relative to the control. The stated preference results for the DCJ group are significantly different from those for the total sample, and the DCJ budget allocation results are inconsistent with the preferences expressed by the total sample. DCJ style committees may reflect how educated citizens make choices. However, selection and impacts of the deliberation make it likely these committees are not representative of the broader population.

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