Although congestion pricing has been considered as a key tool of transport demand management (TDM), it is rarely implemented, mainly due to its low public acceptance and resulting political costs. Recently a new approach was suggested: reward desirable behavior rather than punish undesirable behavior. Specifically, positive financial incentives have been suggested to encourage road users to change their departure time, mode of transportation, or route to minimize congestion. This paper makes three contributions to the literature on congestion pricing. First, we offer a comprehensive conceptual examination, reflecting discussions among practitioners in Israel, regarding the positive incentives approach, including various aspects that are related to both positive incentives and congestion tolls, highlighting the differences between the two policies. Second, we use a governmentally-managed pilot with positive incentives that was recently implemented in Israel and which reported important behavioral responses to positive incentives. Third, we use the Israeli experience to examine media discourse regarding congestion pricing policies in general, as well as positive incentive initiatives. We find that the positive incentives pilot demonstrated promising behavioral responses. Moreover, analysis of newspaper articles shows that while the main view of positive incentives is positive, mainly because participation is voluntary, the main attitude toward congestion tolls is negative due to concerns about equity.

Israeli politicians strongly support inter-urban rail investment and network development connecting peripheral localities, while transport experts voice criticism and oppose many of the planned investments. This study focuses on the lacuna in transportation scholarship regarding elected officials' expectations from rail investment in peripheral areas and its potential to reduce spatial disparities, stressing that there is little research effort to reveal the reasoning of politicians when promoting transport investment and the extent to which some of the political considerations may reflect an authentic representation of public sentiments.

First, an explorative qualitative study was conducted, using multiple data sets, including 12 in-depth interviews with elected officials and transport decision makers, newspaper articles, and professional documents. Analysis identified four main themes with conflicting perspectives between transport experts and politicians: Marginal vis-a-vis revolutionary effects; daily vis-a-vis less frequent activities; transport link vis-a-vis emotional link and social justice vis-a-vis social commitment. These themes reflect the tension between the discourse of accessibility led by experts and the implied discourse of mobility by politicians.

The second stage was based on a large scale survey of 2008 respondents from peripheral and central localities in Israel, aimed at revealing public beliefs and preferences regarding rail investment in peripheral localities.

Results showed that differences of opinion between experts and politicians do not stem only from political bias or irrelevant interests but reflect experts' inability to consider benefits that are appreciated by both politicians and the general public. The study also draws attention to different approaches to the goals of transportation systems. While the dominant voice in scholarly discourse considers accessibility gains as the main goal of transport policy, both elected politicians and residents from peripheral localities also appreciate mobility gains.

Deliberative democracy fosters greater involvement of the public in policymaking. However, psychological challenges involved in eliciting policy preferences receive little attention in this context. This study addresses the implications of opportunity cost neglect (OCN) and impact bias for policy preferences. Utilizing a survey experiment among residents of peripheral towns in Israel, we examine preferences regarding investment in rail infrastructure in peripheral areas. In line with psychological studies on OCN, we find evidence that priming awareness to alternatives can de-bias OCN in policy preferences. However, this method is less effective for people who exhibit impact bias (respondents for whom the policy is new), presenting a serious challenge to the validity of policy preferences of those who are expected to be most affected by the considered policy. This paper offers a theoretical contribution to the relationship between OCN and impact bias, and discusses the practical implications for public participation in policymaking.

Often portrayed as social resistance fueled by authorities' discrimination and legal racism, minorities' noncompliance is considered to undermine the current order and commonly ascribed to distrust in government. To better understand noncompliance as a manifestation of distrust, this article focuses on the well-documented violation of planning, building, and property laws among the Israeli-Arab minority, who consistently exemplify distrust in government. Differing from current research, our analysis explores what facilitates noncompliance on-the-ground, draws on face-to-face interviews with 30 Arab-Israeli offenders who built their houses illegally, and uses the noncompliant behavior as the unit of analysis. In contrast to the common idiosyncratic portrayal of noncompliance, illegal building emerged as depending on a threefold collective effort: institutional, social, and practical. Uncovering collective support mechanisms for noncompliance suggests that distrust in government is compensated by trust in informal arrangements, thus raising new dilemmas around where personal responsibilities end and public ones begin.

Despite the plethora of research on environmental participatory processes, the forms of nongovernmental organization (NGO) involvement in these processes, and the influence of their involvement on participation outcomes, are still under-conceptualized. This article aims to develop a conceptual typology for NGO roles in environmental participatory processes and to suggest how these roles might be associated with participation outcomes. Following a review of public participation literature and NGO capacities, we present four prototypes of NGO roles along two axes: orientation axis and nature of involvement axis. The prototypes include Entrepreneur, Service-Provider, Enabler, and Partner. We then offer an empirical illustration of the typology using eight case studies across the globe and discuss how the four NGO roles might be associated with outcomes of participatory processes. The framework acknowledges the complex, sometimes limited, contribution of NGOs to participatory processes and suggests practical implications.

Problem, research strategy, and findings

The current focus on power relationships in planning processes emphasizes socioeconomic characteristics of the general public, whose participation is often portrayed as one-time, idiosyncratic, nonprofessional, and relatively powerless. To shift attention to the understudied repeated participation in the general public, we distinguish serial participation as a distinct participation pattern by focusing on an underexplored group, referred to as natural joiners or usual suspects. Our analysis focuses on Jerusalem and draws on interviews with serial participators (N = 13) who participated in at least three different planning processes and with city planners (N = 19). Becoming a serial participator emerged as an evolutionary process, during which knowledge gained triggered transitional learning, manifested by a broader perspective on planning and a transition toward locality-oriented participation. Serial participators’ influence varies; it can extend beyond specific planning outcomes to the process itself and the discourse among city planners. Although it does not mitigate imbalanced power relations within the public, serial participation contributes to more balanced power relations between ordinary citizens and paid participants in planning.

Takeaway for practice

Serial participators can provide planners with valuable historical perspective, local knowledge, and participation recommendations while serving as intermediaries to the local community capable of mobilizing others and activating civic networks. Planners can nurture serial participation by encouraging repeated involvement of individuals engaged in additional community spheres or passionate “anecdotal” participants. Seeking influence and not recognition, serial participators may not always fully cooperate. Planners should invest in long-term relationships that allow for reconciling inevitable disagreements.

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are hypothesized to replace or change the use of the transport system by facilitating new or different activities. This article offers a review of more than 40 years of research regarding the relationship between ICTs and urban mobility. We discuss the expectations for the changes in travel demand, travel patterns, and the urban form as a result of the development and introduction of ICTs. Much of the interest in the relationships between ICTs and mobility is premised on the expectation of substitution effects, but empirical findings often suggest more complex effects than direct substitution. Although research on single types of travel activity may sometimes indicate simple substitution effects, examination of the broader impacts may also reveal travel generation effects as well. As such, ICTs do not simply substitute mobility patterns but change them. A growing body of research focuses on changing mobility patterns (in terms of time and space), changes in the experience of travel and changes in the perceptions of travel costs due to the interaction between old and new technologies for overcoming distance. ICTs are gradually becoming embedded within the transport system, enabling flexibility, multitasking, and an increase in human activities.

Given the potential for uncertainties to influence mega-projects, this study examines how mega-projects are deliberated in the public arena. The paper traces the strategies used to promote the Dead Sea Water Canal. Findings show that the Dead Sea mega-project was encumbered by ample uncertainties. Treatment of uncertainties in early coverage was dominated by economics and raised primarily by politicians, while more contemporary media discourses have been dominated by ecological uncertainties voiced by environmental non-governmental organizations. This change in uncertainty type is explained by the changing nature of the project and by shifts in societal values over time. The study also reveals that ‘uncertainty reduction’ and to a lesser degree, ‘project cancellation’, are still the strategies most often used to address uncertainties. Statistical analysis indicates that although uncertainties and strategies are significantly correlated, there may be other intervening variables that affect this correlation. This research also therefore contributes to wider and ongoing considerations of uncertainty in the public arena through various media representational practices.