Role-playing in public engagement for housing for vulnerable populations: An experiment exploring its possibilities and limitations

Carey Doberstein

Land Use Policy, 2020, vol. 99, issue C

Abstract: Public consultation and engagement on housing development and neighbourhood change can be so controversial and at times alarmist such that NIMBY (“Not in my back yard”) and even the more extreme BANANA (“Build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone”) attitudes often prevail. Public engagement as currently conceived and practiced by most governments is faced with high expectations but low satisfaction among many involved. This article reports the findings from a group-based role-playing experiment in Canada involving local residents discussing and evaluating a hypothetical proposal for a new housing development for currently homeless individuals. The results find that those who were randomly assigned a role to play with attitudes different from their own were more likely to report higher satisfaction with the group discussion and recommendation than those who were not assigned a role different from their own identity and attitudes. The study finds no relationship between role-playing and the self-reported sense of one’s influence on the process or how much they learned about the issues. The findings point to new frontiers of public engagement that involve playful role-playing or other “games” as a means to create space for mutual understanding and tolerance for decisions among citizens in these fraught debates.

Keywords: NIMBYism; perspective-taking; serious games; affordable housing; public engagement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:99:y:2020:i:c:s0264837720307122

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.105032

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