Village-Level Participatory Budgeting in Kenya: A Conjoint Survey Experiment

Previously, we conducted a Randomized Controlled Trial in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, Kenya. Building on prior work on participatory processes in Kenya (Grillos 2022; Wampler & Touchton 2023), our experimental design randomly varied three common varieties of public participation in a budgeting decision (consultation, voting and deliberative consensus). The RCT allows us to observe outcomes of each process operating in isolation and then compare those results. It does not, however, tell us what participants would prefer if given a direct choice between different versions of the process. We thus embedded a conjoint experiment within the endline survey for that RCT which asks respondents to compare bundled attributes of hypothetical participatory processes. From this, we hope to learn whether the decision process is perceived as important relative to other attributes of a public good when citizens decide whether or not to invest their time or money in long-run maintenance activities or collective action. This will complement the findings of our RCT but also stands alone as an assessment of preferences across the multidimensional characteristics of participatory budgeting processes. These revealed choice experiments serve as a first step toward understanding what influences long-run maintenance and thus sustainability of local public goods, such as water projects.