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Abstract We investigated what people consider the optimal level of citizen involvement in local policy decision-making. This is an important question to answer, given that civil servants and politicians are increasingly confronted with the pressure to add a participatory layer to representative democratic policy-making. Across five empirical studies (total N = 1470), we consistently found that, overall, the most preferred decision-making model is a balanced model in which citizens and the government are equally involved. Despite this preferred ‘overall’ pattern of equal involvement, we identified three subgroups within the citizenry with different preference curves: Some citizens prefer a model in which citizens and the government are truly equal partners, whereas others prefer a model in which either the government or citizens are relatively more involved in the policy decision-making process. The main contribution of our work is thus that we identified a perceived ‘overall’ optimal level of citizen engagement, and variations to that optimum depending on citizens’ individual traits. This information might be helpful to policy-makers in developing effective citizen participation processes.