Improving Public Engagement in Construction Development Projects from a Stakeholder's Perspective

Public engagement (PE) involves multidisciplinary stakeholders contributing their perspectives to a project in order to achieve a common goal. However, it is not easy to take the needs and wishes of stakeholders into account while balancing their diverse power and interests in the engagement process. The unbalanced distribution of power and interests inevitably causes conflict during engagement with multiple stakeholders. Research on how to improve PE performance from a stakeholder's perspective is still in its infancy. This study used a survey to investigate the complicated relationships between stakeholder's power, interests, conflict, and project satisfaction. The results showed that different forms of power and interest influenced final satisfaction with PE projects either directly or indirectly, through conflict. The PE organizers are encouraged to include more representatives from different groups of stakeholders in the team decision-making process to enable active engagement with their interests and to establish a systematic and logical team-decision-making process to decrease task conflict. The findings of this study will contribute to balancing stakeholder's power and interests, managing conflict effectively, improving PE performance for construction development projects, and, finally, to maximizing public value. © 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.