Power of Persuasion: How Planners Shape Decisions Through Communication

Li Fang, Yijia Wen, Jingze Zhang, Corey Xu, Gordon Erlebacher and Samuel R. Staley

Journal of the American Planning Association, 2025, vol. 91, issue 3, 449-464

Abstract: Problem, research strategy, and findingsBecause most planning decisions are ultimately made by politicians, effective communication with elected officials is essential for shaping their decisions. In this study, we empirically examined whether email communications initiated by urban planners affect planning-related decisions made by politicians and what communication tactics work. We leveraged a unique data set of all email communications between planners and politicians and voter records of politicians on planning-related decisions in the city of Tallahassee (FL). We built a dynamic network model as a temporal exponential random graph model and adopted text-mining methods to examine email communication dynamics. We found that a more positive sentiment conveyed from email content was statistically significantly associated with a politician’s tendency to vote consistently with a planner’s recommendation. Moreover, corroborating communications from various planners were more persuasive than repeated communication from a single planner, suggesting that an organic, decentralized approach to communication is more effective than a hierarchical, top-down one.Takeaway for practiceUrban planners should take the initiative to reach out to politicians to establish positive communication channels. In addition, strengthening collaboration within the planning department by presenting unified information from various planners to a politician can enhance the politician’s confidence in the message and lead to more effective shaping of their decisions.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01944363.2024.2440460 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rjpaxx:v:91:y:2025:i:3:p:449-464

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rjpa20

DOI: 10.1080/01944363.2024.2440460

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the American Planning Association is currently edited by Sandi Rosenbloom

More articles in Journal of the American Planning Association from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().