Western governments are increasingly trying to stimulate citizens to coproduce public services by, among other strategies, offering them financial incentives. However, there are competing views on whether financial incentives stimulate coproduction. While some argue that financial incentives increase citizens' willingness to coproduce, others suggest that incentives decrease their willingness (i.e., crowding out). To test these competing expectations, the authors designed a set of experiments that offered subjects a financial incentive to assist municipalities in helping refugees integrate. The experiment was first conducted among university students within a laboratory setting. Then, the initial findings were replicated and extended among a general adult sample. Results suggest that small financial rewards have no effect: they neither increase nor decrease people's willingness to coproduce. When the offered amount is increased substantially, willingness to coproduce increases only marginally. Hence, financial incentives are not a very cost‐efficient instrument to stimulate coproduction.

Both theory and practice increasingly argue that creating green infrastructure in order to make cities climate-proof requires joint public service delivery across the green infrastructure’s lifecycle. Accordingly, citizen participation in each green infrastructure project stage is required, but the type of participation may differ. So far, limited research has been conducted to detangle how participation in green infrastructure projects is operationalised along the different project stages. This article, therefore, presents a comparative case study of nine European green infrastructure projects, in which we aim to determine: (1) how participatory ambitions may differ across green infrastructure project phases; and (2) which instruments are used to realise the participatory ambitions for each phase and whether these instruments differ across stages. The cases demonstrate different participation ambitions and means in the three project phases distinguished in this article (i.e., design, delivery, and maintenance). The design and maintenance stages resulted in high participation ambitions using organisational instruments (e.g., living labs, partnerships with community groups) and market-based instruments (e.g., open calls). In the delivery phase, participation ambitions decreased significantly in our cases, relying on legal instruments (e.g., statutory consultation) and communicative instruments (e.g., community events). Altogether, our exploratory study helps to define participation across the green infrastructure lifecycle: Early stages focus on creating shared commitment that legitimises the green infrastructure, while later stages are also driven by instrumental motives (lowering management costs). Although theory argues for profound participation in the delivery stage as well, our cases show the contrary. Future research can assess this discrepancy.

Public organizations are increasingly turning to design thinking to address wicked societal issues, enhance innovation, and improve services. However, in general, public organizations do not provide the most receptive context for design thinking. To be applied effectively, design thinking requires sufficient tolerance for uncertainty, capacity for risk-taking, receptiveness to new ideas, and flexibility to learn and adapt. Public organizations, instead, favor rationality, stability, and accountability, and are therefore generally characterized as rigid and risk-averse. Additional efforts are thus required to make way for design thinking within this context. Until now, research on strategies to support the application of design thinking in a public sector context is limited. In this paper, 14 design thinking projects in the public sector were analyzed to identify these strategies, resulting in a practical framework of strategic actions to build confidence, form an alliance, generate support, enhance compatibility, and thereby enable design thinking in the public sector. Accordingly, this study contributes to the theory and practice of design thinking for public issues.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a primary tool for conserving marine biodiversity. The literature presents a scattered picture regarding the extent to which co-management can be considered valuable. In this study we examine, what conditions are for co-management to make a contribution to conserving marine ecosystems (e.g., stopping coral bleaching and safeguarding fish populations). By combining data on MPA management practices with a novel source of global biodata collected by citizens (ReefCheck), we demonstrate that if co-management is part of a formal governmental strategy, coral reefs show up to 86% fewer bleached colonies and up to 12.2 times larger fish populations than co-managed MPAs lacking formalized governmental support.

This paper tests to what extent the dimensionof the CLEAR model can be used as reliable predictors of an individual’s decision to pursue council membership. By using the CLEAR framework as an extension of known frameworks such as self-determination theory and public service motivation that only focus on motivation, we develop a more comprehensive view of an individual’s decision to run for candidacy. Our research shows that people do not distinguish between the ‘can do’ and ‘like to’ dimensions. Rather, these two dimensions must be considered as three sub-dimensions in our research coined as amotivation, intrinsic motivation, and extrinsic motivation. Furthermore, in explaining why people tend to decide to run for council membership, only amotivation, intrinsic motivation and social support (enabled dimension) appeared to be reliable predictors. To further our analysis, we have analysed how these different dimensions differ across different societal groups.