A justice perspective of understanding local public's non-institutionalized participation intention toward public facilities: dual-pathway insights from waste-incineration-power projects in China

Purpose While institutionalized public participation is widely studied, drivers of non-institutionalized participation remain underexplored. This research aims to investigate the psychological mechanisms behind such confrontational intentions in public facility siting conflicts. Design/methodology/approach Building on justice theory and the dual-pathway model of collective action, we propose a framework linking procedural justice (PJ) and relative deprivation (RD) to non-institutionalized participation intention (NPI) via an emotion path (angry emotion, AE) and an efficacy path (perceived ease of use, PE; perceived usefulness, PU). Survey data from 361 residents near two waste-incineration-power projects in China were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings Procedural justice reduces non-institutionalized participation by lowering relative deprivation, which then operates through two parallel mediators: angry emotion (emotion path) and perceived ease of use (efficacy path). Perceived usefulness does not show a significant mediating role. The two significant pathways are statistically comparable in strength, operate independently, and jointly explain how fairness perceptions and action accessibility shape behavioral intentions. Originality/value This study contributes to public participation research by integrating justice perspectives with collective action frameworks to account for non-institutionalized participation. It validates the dual-pathway model in the under-researched context of infrastructure siting conflicts, and also highlights the context-dependent nature of efficacy perceptions, where perceived ease of use outweighs perceived usefulness in shaping participation intentions. The findings offer nuanced insights for designing more inclusive participatory governance and conflict mitigation.