Cost-benefit Analysis in Participatory Planning: Deliberative Theory Coming to Use

Abstract

This paper provides an overview, assessment, and critique of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) as an evaluation technique in participatory processes, including communicative and collaborative planning. Broad citizen involvement requires that evaluation methods are understandable to lay participants, enabling them to grasp expert reasoning and assess how proposed projects might affect them. For participants strongly committed to specific values or effects (e.g., environmental protection), the economic rationality of CBA is particularly unsatisfactory. Their preferences are often inadequately represented in standard CBA. To address this, the paper suggests hybrid methods that combine stated preference techniques with deliberative small-group processes, such as focus groups, citizens’ juries, consensus conferences, and deliberative polls. The approach of "deliberative monetary valuation" allows preferences to evolve throughout the planning process, thereby bridging analytic evaluation with communicative planning theory.