WE-democracy

Tender: CERV-2022-CITZENS-CIV - Citizenship and participation

Project: 101081426- WE-Democracy GAP

Implementation period: 01.03.2023 – 28.02.2025. 

Project duration: 24 months 

Why we work?

The COVID-19 crisis brought a halt to many everyday activities but not to political engagement; during the pandemic, online democratic participation has seen even an unprecedented level of engagement. However, awareness of such participatory democracy instruments needs to be greatly increased, and stakeholders must work together to do so.

What we do?

Crowdsourcing on Circular Economy

Problem mapping

The purpose of this literature review was to integrate current knowledge in our methodology and focus on the existing gaps. Literature review enabled us to assess the type of questions that will be asked to citizens. The survey will be conducted online using the Survey Monkey tool in order to easily process and analyse the data. The tool that will be used to conduct the online survey will be a self-administered questionnaire. Survey Monkey will enable us to easily create visual surveys with professional content and viewing the collected responses in real-time, using tables, charts, PDF reports and data files for most file types. Participation is entirely voluntary, and responses were analysed only in aggregate. Most of the questions will be multiple choice. Some of the questions will be compulsory such as the socio-demographic ones, others optional in order to avoid incomplete answers.

Citizens are going to identify problems related to circular economy that they encounter in their daily life through an online survey. The purpose of the survey will be: 

1. to uncover ways to engage citizens in the CE by assessing the current citizens' knowledge and behaviours with regards to the CE, the factors that could increase their engagement in the CE (incentives, drivers, etc) and the barriers preventing this engagement. 

2. to provide policy-relevant insights in the transition from a linear economy to a circular economy in the European Union. In particular, the survey will be structured to determine (among the others): 

• Citizens' knowledge on the environment in general and in particular on reuse and recycling. 
• Citizens' purchase intentions and environmental concerns regarding food and electronic products. 
• Citizens' actual behaviour regarding food waste and electrical and electronic products (green behaviour and confidence in green products). 
• Citizens' attitudes towards regarding the collection and disposal of bio-waste.

Problem solving

Each partner is going to organize 1 public event for citizens to debate and propose solutions to the "circular economy" problems mapped.

Policy formulation

Citizens will evaluate the solutions proposed in the Problem Solving Phase in order to highlight the most popular ideas and priorities for European policy-makers during online meetings. During these events, citizens will formulate policy proposals and recommendations on circular economy with experts in the field.

Digital Dashboard on Cricular Economy

(W)E-democracy will include the development and implementation of a Digital Dashboard for social listening in order to gather online opinions on the issue of Circular Economy. Social listening allows to watch people's feedback, questions, conversations or comments in order to discover opportunities or curate interesting content for those audiences. It's a combination of paying attention and knowing the best way to respond and act. 

We are not going to "monitor" we are going to "listen". Monitoring takes a scrape and dump approach, which can be helpful for collecting any and every mention. Listening takes a reflect-and-analyze approach, helping to notice patterns and insights, things like sentiment and channels. The consortium will test the social listening method to increase the reach to citizens' opinions on circular economy beyond those already actively engaged in the Crowdsourcing activity. 

The creation of the Digital Dashboard, to capture public online conversations on the topic of circular economy, will include the following four steps: 

1. Collecting and scraping the data 

2. Social listening mechanisms; 

3. Categorisation process; 

4. Creation of an automated system – the Digital Dashboard. 

The project will specifically focus on ethical 'social listening' which benefits from the availability of big data while protecting individual privacy and safeguarding citizens against inappropriate access to and use of data. The combination of social listening and Crowdsourcing is intended to improve the understanding of stakeholders what the public at large thinks about circular economy and the possible solutions for policy-makers.

Events and awareness raising 

(W)E-democracy will organise 5 national events aimed at raising public awareness about the crowdsourcing activities and the resulting policy recommendations. These events will be aimed at all citizens that somehow have been involved in the project but also to all the citizens interested in crowdsourcing, e-democracy and circular economy topics. 

These events aim at: 

• encouraging citizens to speak up on issues directly affecting them, increasing citizens democratic participation in political life, reflecting on crowdsourcing and other e-participation experiences at national level by presenting case studies / lessons learned relevant for the EU decision-making process; 

• stimulating citizens engagement with the EU, 
• improving citizens understanding of EU policy-making processes, 
• discussing technological, societal, cultural, political challenges for citizens, organizers and decision-makers also in order to contribute to close the digital and gender gaps.

If you are interested in this project, please, contact Bernadett Vucsko vucsko.bernadett@cromo.hu

Evaluation of the project

During the implementation, an online questionnaire will be used to assess the situation, knowledge and habits of citizens. Based on the information obtained from the responses, the actual problems are then highlighted. In order to solve the problems, the participants discuss the issues in face-to-face and online meetings and awareness-raising events with citizens, policy experts and decision-makers, and recommendations are made to address the problems identified and communicated to decision-makers.

The consortium has chosen a crowdsourcing approach to achieve this, with each member organisation building on its own community to carry out the tasks it has planned, and then comparing the results, drawing conclusions and making recommendations. The model provides a good tool to solve a specific problem by involving the public. It builds on public participation. Participants submit solutions, represented by their member organisation.

To assess this, a questionnaire was designed to gauge the public's current knowledge and attitudes towards the circular economy, the factors that could increase their commitment to it, and the barriers that hinder commitment. This has led to a report on the project itself and its evaluation.

Link to the report:

The project has also produced an international report, including details and results of the project.

Link to the international report:

In addition, the national report is now available, which includes a short summary of the project in the native language of all partners.

Link to the national report: