An Examination of the Effectiveness and Limitations of Online Decentralized Participation in Social Decision-Making Processes

Recently, the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), where participants make decisions equally through online voting, has been gaining attention, while traditional methods involve a multi-stage approach, beginning with discussions among stakeholders to extract key issues and followed by evaluations from randomly selected citizens. However, it remains unclear which issues will gain social acceptance under these different methods. This study investigates whether the evaluation of these processes differs depending on the type of issues. A web-based questionnaire survey was conducted using a between-participants two-factor design with a scenario experiment. Participants read scenarios on local community issues (whether to build a geothermal power plant or how to revitalize a shopping district) and decision frameworks (decentralized online or multi-stage decision-making) and responded to related questions. The results indicated that decentralized online struggles with issues involving significant conflicts of interest. However, it is more accepted when applied to relatively low-conflict issues where participants feel empowered.