Evaluation and classification of public participation in EIA for transportation infrastructure megaprojects in China

Public participation is an important aspect of environmental impact assessment (EIA) because of its prominent contribution to sustainable built environment. Developing countries, such as China, have attempted to promote the role of public participation in EIA. While comprehensive evaluations of public participation in EIA in China are still scarce, the government finds it difficult to develop policies to improve the status quo because of the ambiguity in the type of public participation. Therefore, this study collects EIA reports and evaluates their public participation sections, taking transportation infrastructure megaprojects as an example. The public participation index system is adopted to evaluate EIA reports between 2014 and 2021, and the k-means algorithm is used to classify the types of public participation based on the evaluation results. The results indicate that although the Chinese government is increasing its emphasis on public participation in EIA, the impact of public participation on environmental decision-making remains limited. Besides, public participation in China can be divided into three types: non-participation, passive participation, and interactive participation. Among them, nonparticipation has the largest proportion (61%) and is at the rung 2 "Therapy" of "Non-participation" level. Passive participation follows (23.4%) and is at rung 3 "Informing" or rung 4 "Consultation" of "Tokenism" levels. Interactive participation has the smallest proportion (15.6%) and is at rung 4 "Consultation" or rung 5 "Placation" of "Tokenism" levels. Third, The three participation types reveal three dilemmas: (1) Local governments do not pay attention to public participation in EIA; (2) the public is unwilling to actively participate in EIA; and (3) authorities do not consider broader comments. Fourth, it appears that airports, with their minimal footprint, are more successful in conducting effective public participation during EIA processes. Additionally, economic development has a positive influence on public participation in EIA. These findings help researchers and practitioners in the built environment improve the effectiveness of public participation activities.