2 A representative sample of 7,851 residents was surveyed both before and six months after the intervention to capture changes in civic engagement behaviours and attitudes toward government. The analysis applied fixedeffects regression models, controlling for demographic variables such as age, gender, education, and income, to isolate the causal effects of the intervention. This rigorous experimental design enabled a robust assessment of how locally embedded participatory practices influence broader patterns of civic participation and perceptions of governmental accountability. Findings and Analysis Civic-Engagement Behaviours Residents in the treatment communities exhibited notable improvements in civic engagement behaviours six months after the intervention. Specifically, they were significantly more likely to attend policy-related meetings, express views through media, vote in neighbourhood committee elections, participate in government-approved marches, donate money or resources, and engage in volunteer work. Smaller but positive changes were also observed in blood donation, while no significant differences emerged for petitioning or directly expressing views to government officials: These results indicate that the participatory budgeting can generate measurable increases in non-budgetrelated civic actions and demands for improvement from the central government, while simultaneously boosting satisfaction with national policies and local economic conditions. These results hold important implications for policymakers, development practitioners, and governance reform advocates. They highlight both the opportunities and risks of integrating democratic practices into centralized governance structures, and underscore the need for careful design of participatory institutions to ensure they foster genuine civic empowerment rather than symbolic engagement. Study Methodology This study employed a large-scale field experiment in Chengdu, a megacity in China with over 20 million residents, to evaluate the impact of participatory decisionmaking in community budgeting. Communities were randomly assigned to either a treatment group, where residents were invited to deliberate and vote on the allocation of local resources, or a control group with no such intervention during the study period. The participatory budgeting process was fully integrated into existing political and administrative structures, implemented without external funding or international aid, ensuring its local regime and political relevance. A large-scale field experiment on participatory decision-making in China Public Policy BULLETIN
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