Analysing the outcomes of over 30 Citizens’ Assemblies and Juries held across the UK between 2019-2023 revealed which recommendations from public dialogues had the most overall support, and the policy mechanisms that are most popular.

Our research found that people are deeply concerned about climate change - public appetite for action goes beyond current government policy, giving a clear license to policy makers to increase the reach and ambition of policies. However, governments have a poor track record of engaging the public and so trust is low. This sentiment is reflected in the types of policies the public designed in these deliberative processes. Political leaders can use this information on public opinion and action appetite to create well-supported policies by showing that they understand people’s concern, and match that concern with confident, ambitious policies. For example, having policy makers assist with making actions simpler, clearer, and easier to engage with was supported by the pubic just as highly as financial support - people are willing to take actions that don’t necessarily save them money, but make sense to them.

This research was conducted as part of Alfie Shepard’s Master’s Thesis, which you can read in full here.

You can also read the summary report here.

We’ve been working with the Climate Change Committee (CCC) to enhance how they develop policy ideas and provide advice by exploring opportunities to embed deliberative public engagement in their decision making processes.

In our first phase of work with the CCC, we reviewed the use of deliberative methods in different policy areas to develop a guidance document tailored to climate policy making. This identified seven ways in which deliberative methods can contribute to the policy process and different approaches to embed deliberation into climate policy making in the UK.  You can read the report here.

We also designed and delivered a deliberative citizens’ panel on home energy decarbonisation in partnership with the CCC. This representative panel of UK home owners worked with CCC analysts to design a package of policy measures to reduce emissions from homes in line with the need to tackle climate change. The CCC are now using the findings to help inform its advice on policy to address home emissions. You can read the report here.

We hosted a citizen’s jury on climate change and advertising regulation to whether past behavioural change strategies such as advert bans or mandatory labelling would be supported for high-carbon products and services.

Whilst previous citizens’ initiatives have recommended measures to restrict advertising, our jury looked in detail at the issue and developed a series of proposals to regulate advertising of high carbon products and services. We tested these proposals with a nationwide poll and found that many people want to see additional regulation around the advertisement of high-carbon products and services - 67% of polling respondents were supportive of additional measures, and over 50% think ‘no change’ is not an option. A traffic light labelling system was the most popular proposal both in the Jury and in the polling results. However, even though a ban may be effective in achieving consumer behaviour, people held other strong beliefs about having a ban that had a greater influence on their (non)support for it.

A summary of the project and results can be found here, along with a more detailed report here, with an appendix document on our methodology here.

You can watch a recording of the launch event here.

The project was run by Professor Rebecca Willis and Dr Jacob Ainscough.

Our citizen panel has met periodically over the last two years to discuss how to reduce our energy usage and meet our climate targets in ways that work for everyone.

This project builds on the Positive Low Energy Futures (PLEF) project, which showed that 52% reductions in UK energy demand are technically possible by 2050. Change at this scale requires advances in technology deployment, shifts in social practices, and integrated approaches to regional and national planning.

The deliberations and outputs from the Panel will be used to provide inputs for new runs of the PLEF model, generating scenarios that are informed by social intelligence as well as technical feasibility. The project aims to generate insights into public views on the conditions and systemic changes needed to move rapidly to a low energy future in ways that are fair to everyone and help us save money, live more healthily, and protect the environment. It aims to better understand the social mandate for a variety of possible changes in how we use energy, the extent of change that would be supported, and the roles expected of citizens, governments, businesses and other actors in the energy transition.

This project was funded by UKRI through the Energy Demand Research Centre.

For more information please contact Andy Yuille on andy.yuille@manchester.ac.uk