Toward co-creation: institutional arrangements in climate participatory budgeting

Seeun Ryu, Jiseul Kim and Elnaz Chitsazzadeh

Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management, 2026, vol. 38, issue 4, 682-707

Abstract: PurposeFew analyses evaluate how institutional arrangements for climate participatory budgeting (CPB) lead to co-creation, especially in the context of the United States. This study examines two questions: (1) To what extent do public finance institutions, such as climate-related earmarked funding mechanisms and climate budgeting and investment platforms, facilitate co-creation; and (2) How do institutional environments shape these co-creation dynamics in climate finance and budgeting?Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a qualitative case study design covering 2018–2025. Data include budget records, participatory budgeting committee and City Council meeting minutes, local news coverage, and online public discourse. The analysis integrates textual analysis and lagged similarity analysis using term frequency-inverse document frequency weighting with process tracing to examine temporal relationships between public framing and institutional response.FindingsIt finds an inherent institutional dilemma: institutional arrangements that secure fiscal accountability may simultaneously constrain flexibility and limit the redistribution of decision-making authority required for transformative co-creation. The findings also highlight the importance of institutional context in shaping co-creation dynamics.Originality/valueThe study contributes to public budgeting and finance scholarship by demonstrating how climate participatory budgeting (CPB), embedded in rigid fiscal systems, generates procedural responsiveness without redistributing budgetary authority. Methodologically, it integrates fiscal analysis with longitudinal text-based process tracing to identify how community input is incorporated, filtered, and constrained within the policy cycle.

Keywords: Co-creation; Climate finance; Climate participatory budgeting; Earmarking mechanism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/jpbafm/article/38/4/682/13 ... onal-arrangements-in (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/jpbafm/article-pdf/38/4/68 ... m-05-2025-0128en.pdf (application/pdf)

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:eme:jpbafm:jpbafm-05-2025-0128

DOI: 10.1108/JPBAFM-05-2025-0128

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management is currently edited by Dr Giuseppe Grossi

More articles in Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().