Public participation in EIA and attitude formation

Although public participation in EIAs aims for public acceptance, it does not guarantee the project (of which the EIA is part) is accepted. Moreover, when citizens participate in EIAs, they develop attitudes towards the project itself, and towards the broader policy. This paper addresses the complex relationship between participating in EIA studies and accepting policies. We first discuss what attitudes can develop towards a project, and how they may influence the perception of the broader policy sector and the attitude towards policy processes. We distinguish four attitudes and show they are present in a dike-relocation case in the Netherlands. We further show that different experiences in the EIA led to different project evaluations and this impacted stakeholders' attitudes to participation, projects and policy-making. We found four aspects of the EIA process of this project that partly explain the arisen difference in project attitudes. These aspects are important to consider in the design and management of participative EIAs.