Exploring exchange and influence legitimacy in sustainable urban mobility schemes: a case study of Kristiansund’s city package

This paper explores the exchange and influence legitimacy in Kristiansund’s City Package. While much of the existing literature focuses on larger Norwegian cities, smaller cities with unique contextual challenges remain underexplored, complicating the transfer of urban strategies from larger contexts. Findings from analysing the content of official documents, media articles, and interviews revealed that decision-making processes were predominantly top-down, with the regulatory and incentivising measures of exchange legitimacy unequally distributed in terms of proximity to incentives. Influence legitimacy was primarily concentrated among politicians and bureaucrats, with public inclusion limited to post hoc endorsement of policies adopted elsewhere.