The Psychological Infrastructure of Citizen Engagement in Voluntary Governance: A Scoping Review and Psycho-Institutional Framework

Voluntary and self-governing systems depend on citizens’ willingness to participate, cooperate, comply with rules, and sustain collective action, yet the psychological foundations of such engagement remain fragmented and insufficiently synthesized. Following PRISMA-ScR guidance, this scoping review examines 42 empirical studies published from 2000 through April 2026 to identify psychological and psychosocial foundations of citizen engagement in self-governing and voluntary governance contexts, the contexts in which they have been studied, and their connections to institutional design. Nine recurring psychological foundations cluster into three broader domains: social–relational, including norms, relational accountability, trust, and reciprocal expectations; agentic–motivational, including agency, autonomy, ownership, efficacy, responsibility, stewardship, and meaning; and cognitive–evaluative, including legitimacy and fairness, risk and uncertainty appraisal, learning and system understanding, and perceived feasibility and participation burden. Across the literature, institutional arrangements such as participatory rule-making, recognized authority, communication, monitoring and feedback, rule congruence, accountability, and capacity support are repeatedly connected to these psychological conditions. Building on these findings, this article proposes a theory-building psycho-institutional framework that outlines potential relationships among institutional conditions, psychological foundations, and voluntary governance actions and outcomes, and offers a psychological interpretation of Ostrom’s design principles. The review highlights psychological processes as an important but underdeveloped dimension of institutional analysis in participatory governance.