Design-driven citizen participation towards 1.5-degree planetary diets

Purpose The transition towards sustainable diets requires profound changes in the food system and the involvement of various actors, including citizens. This calls for the development of processes for citizen participation. Design/methodology/approach This article explores the role of design-driven approaches in leveraging citizens’ knowledge and enhancing their capacities to contribute to policy processes. Through a series of workshops, citizens collaborated to ideate and evaluate food policies and retail-related measures to promote sustainable diets. Findings According to the results, citizens can draw on their everyday experiences as consumers and leverage broader political thinking to address public issues. However, citizens also appear to self-select towards issues of private consumption and away from the realm of public policy. Research limitations/implications The data are collected from a relatively homogeneous group of people. The voices of marginalised groups are limited due to the methodology of open participation. The study highlights that citizens expect diversity when participating in collaborative design processes and confirms the tendency of open participation to reproduce existing social biases. Practical implications Organisers and facilitators of processes of open participation should develop means to counter the inherent biases in citizen participation. Available means include hybrid forms of participation, diversity in the means of recruitment, and workshop design that utilises the diversity among participating citizens. Originality/value According to the results, citizens can draw on their everyday experiences as consumers and leverage broader political thinking to address public issues. However, citizens also appear to self-select towards issues of private consumption and away from the realm of public policy.