Replication Data for: Varieties of Participation and Investment in Local Public Goods: Evidence from an RCT in Kenya

Citizen participation is widely believed to improve development outcomes by increasing participants’ willingness-to-invest in development projects. Participatory budgeting is one of the most popular ways to engage the public in policy making. These programs have spread rapidly across the Global South but have rarely been evaluated. Outcomes related to participant behavior likely depend on specific procedures used to encourage and structure participation. Within the context of participatory budgeting in rural Kenya, we randomly assign three commonly used group decision procedures to select village-level development projects. In this registered report, we compare treatments across villages on several behavioral measures of public goods investment. This represents our first step toward assessing how differing participatory designs promote collective action to maintain projects, thereby promoting sustainable development. Contrary to theoretical expectations, we find that a less intensive consultation process leads to greater long-run investment in projects relative to more intensive processes involving public meetings.