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Abstract
Large-scale problems, including environmental degradation and urbanization, affect a significant proportion of the world. A concerted effort is required to address these problems. Technology-mediated public participation systems enhance opportunities to tackle these challenges by facilitating mass collaboration. The widespread use of mobile technology in developing countries offers a unique opportunity to enable citizens to address these problems. The existing literature does not provide a design framework to enable optimal participation in the context of low levels of literacy and digital skills, high data costs and mobile devices with varying technological affordances. In addition, in the context of developing countries, motivations to contribute to participatory systems for the common good are not well understood. This research, therefore, seeks to answer the following questions: what are the design principles underlying a public participation system that can enable optimal participation for the common good in this context? How can the design framework accommodate participant motivations to contribute to this system?
The research questions are investigated as per Peffers et al. (2007) design science research (DSR) methodology. Design requirements are extracted from the normative theory of public participation (Webler 1995) and value-belief-norm theory for the environment (Stern et al. 1999). A design prototype to facilitate participation in the environment domain is instantiated to 104 participants in Guntur District, India. Participants interact with the design upon receipt of cues related to the local biodiversity. Primary data includes participants’ interaction with the design prototype, feedback from four focus group discussions and thirty-one semi-structured individual interviews. Secondary data includes mobile industry reports and the Indian government’s telecommunication regulations. A case study method (Yin 2009) is used to evaluate design meta-requirements.
Findings reveal that to enable optimal participation in the participatory system in the context, the normative theory of public participation must include an additional socio-cultural factor, ‘Nammakamu’. Loosely translated as trust in the Telugu language, it is signaled by the presence of elders or ‘Big-men’ in the process. The concept of ‘Big-men’ is part of the repertoire of terms invoking leadership in the south Asian context (Mines and Gourishankar 1990).
Findings also reveal that the loci of control of structural and behavioral norms in the participatory process rest within the purview of the Big-men instead of residing with facilitators and participants respectively, as seen in a western democratic context. In regards to the second research question, findings indicate that awareness of threats and, of consequences to one’s values, does not always lead to ascribing responsibility to self, at least in the domain of environment. The socio-economic context plays a moderating role in ascription of responsibility to self. Findings from focus group discussions on the design requirements also reveal two aspects within the existing ICT that prevent optimal participation: a lack of trust in mobile communications (nuisance calls, opaque billing and scams) and the ‘Balkanization’ of participants into numerous communication networks. The revised design meta-requirements of the participatory system reflect these findings.
This research enriches existing literature on public participation by testing and expanding the conceptual foundations of the normative theory of public participation in an ICT implementation, in a developing country. This research contributes to the practice of DSR in a developing country context by developing a body of circumscription knowledge and, by prescribing a design framework for enabling technology-mediated public participation. This research contributes to the study of information systems in developing countries (ISDC) by revealing the ‘developmental struggle’ in which the IS innovation - provision of an ICT enabled design - is implicated: the inter-twining of micro-level use of technology artifacts with macro-level political and economic concerns.