Exploring factors of preparing public engagement for large-scale development projects via a focus group study

• Public engagement (PE) has been perceived as a means of defusing opposition and falsely representing public expectations.
• Four focus groups were conducted by inviting multi-disciplinary stakeholders to explore critical factors for preparing PE.
• The qualitative data were analyzed on the basis of the grounded theory.
• Seven critical factors were identified, e.g., governmental support, project characteristics, stakeholder identification etc.
• Recommendations were proposed, e.g., standardized PE guidelines, appropriate information, and stakeholder identification.

Public engagement (PE) is increasingly employed to gauge public opinions and obtain their support on large-scale planning and development projects. Despite its booming development, there is a lack of research on how to prepare PE activities. In order to explore the factors of preparing PE activities in the construction industry, four focus groups were conducted, each including different stakeholders (e.g., PE organizers, construction professionals, interest groups, and local residents). Seven critical factors for preparing PE were identified into 3 main dimensions: (1) social (e.g., governmental support and bottom-up consultation approaches); (2) project (e.g., project characteristics, PE program, and project information and publicity); and (3) stakeholder (e.g., stakeholder identification and representative sampling). Based on the results of focus groups, we propose several practical recommendations to stimulate active engagement and improve performance of PE activities, including developing PE guidelines, preparing project information with appropriate language and formatting, and establishing stakeholder identification methods.