Modelling stakeholder participation in transport planning

In this paper an agent-based model is presented as a contribution to build new tools to support decision-makers and practitioners in designing and guiding effective participation processes. The model reproduces the interaction process in a network of stakeholders by means of a multi-state opinion dynamics and bounded confidence model as a basis to investigate the consensus formation phenomenon. The participatory decision-making process about the acceptability of a parking management strategy inside a University campus in Catania (Italy) was simulated to see to what extent interaction among stakeholders can foster the emergence of consensus. A better parking management is one of the priorities for sustainable mobility proposed by the mobility management office of the University. Results show that many links can help the opinion exchange process and the convergence of opinions and that the final outcome (i.e. approval or disapproval of the parking management strategy) is highly influenced by the initial distribution of opinions. This suggests that having a preliminary knowledge of stakeholders' opinions can be helpful to arrange the participation process and repeated interaction opportunities contribute in smoothing diverging opinions.