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Participatory budgeting, as a paradigm for democratic innovations, engages citizens in the distribution of a public budget to projects, which they propose and vote for implementation. So far, voting algorithms have been proposed and studied in social choice literature to elect projects that are popular, while others prioritize a proportional representation of voters' preferences, for instance, the rule of equal shares. However, the anticipated impact and novelty in the broader society by the winning projects, as selected by different algorithms, remains totally under-explored, lacking both a universal theory of impact for voting and a rigorous unifying framework for impact and novelty assessments. This article tackles this grand challenge towards new axiomatic foundations for designing effective and fair voting methods. This is through new and striking insights derived from a large-scale analysis of biases over 345 real-world voting outcomes, characterized for the first time by a novel portfolio of impact and novelty metrics. We find strong causal evidence that equal shares comes with impact loss in several infrastructural projects of different cost levels that have been so far over-represented. However, it also comes with a novel, yet over-represented, impact gain in welfare, education and culture. We discuss the broader implications of these results and how impact loss can be mitigated at the stage of campaign design and project ideation.This article is part of the theme issue 'Co-creating the future: participatory cities and digital governance'.

The digital revolution, fuelled by advancements in social media, Big Data, the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, is reshaping our urban landscapes into 'participatory cities'. These cities leverage digital technologies to foster citizen engagement, collaborative decision-making and community-driven urban development, thus unlocking new potentials while confronting emerging threats. Such technologies are empowering individuals and organizations in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. They do, however, introduce new risks and vulnerabilities that must be carefully managed. Hence, socio-technical innovation is urgently needed. In this connection, open-source technologies, participatory approaches and new forms of governance are becoming more popular and relevant. This theme issue looks into the tangible impacts of these technological advancements, with a focus on participatory cities. It aims to explain how digital tools are used in cities to tackle urban challenges, improve governance and promote sustainability. Through a collection of in-depth analyses, case studies and real-world examples, this issue seeks to offer a comprehensive understanding of the digital governance frameworks underpinning participatory cities. By offering a platform for multidisciplinary discourse, this theme issue endeavours to contribute to the broader narrative of shaping a more resilient, sustainable and democratic urban future in the digital age.This article is part of the theme issue 'Co-creating the future: participatory cities and digital governance'.

This study examines legitimacy in municipal budgeting decisions, focusing on input, throughput and output dimensions. Using data from four Swiss studies, we explore how citizens assess these dimensions across traditional and innovative decision-making processes and investigate the impact of different voting methods on legitimacy perceptions. Our findings reveal that in routine processes using traditional voting, legitimacy dimensions are considered collectively. Conversely, in innovative participatory budgeting, dimensions are judged separately, involving more active evaluation. Throughput legitimacy (perceived fairness) emerges as crucial in both contexts, while input and output legitimacy's importance varies by process type. The Method of Equal Shares voting system shifts focus towards procedural fairness, increases representation and is perceived as fairer than the traditional Greedy method. However, even fair processes cannot fully compensate for outcome dissatisfaction, highlighting the complex interplay of legitimacy dimensions. This research contributes to understanding legitimacy construction in municipal decision-making, offering insights into the relationship between voting methods and legitimacy perceptions. The findings have implications for policy-makers seeking to enhance the effectiveness and acceptance of budgeting processes. This article is part of the theme issue 'Co-creating the future: participatory cities and digital governance'.

Collective privacy loss becomes a colossal problem, an emergency for personal freedoms and democracy. But, are we prepared to handle personal data as scarce resource and collectively share data under the doctrine: as little as possible, as much as necessary? We hypothesize a significant privacy recovery if a population of individuals, the data collective, coordinates to share minimum data for running online services with the required quality. Here, we show how to automate and scale-up complex collective arrangements for privacy recovery using decentralized artificial intelligence. For this, we compare for the first time attitudinal, intrinsic, rewarded, and coordinated data sharing in a rigorous living-lab experiment of high realism involving > 27,000 real data disclosures. Using causal inference and cluster analysis, we differentiate criteria predicting privacy and five key data-sharing behaviors. Strikingly, data-sharing coordination proves to be a win-win for all: remarkable privacy recovery for people with evident costs reduction for service providers., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences.)

More than 1000 distributed ledger technology (DLT) systems raising $600 billion in investment in 2016 feature the unprecedented and disruptive potential of blockchain technology. A systematic and data-driven analysis, comparison and rigorous evaluation of the different design choices of distributed ledgers and their implications is a challenge. The rapidly evolving nature of the blockchain landscape hinders reaching a common understanding of the techno-socio-economic design space of distributed ledgers and the cryptoeconomies they support. To fill this gap, this paper makes the following contributions: (i) A conceptual architecture of DLT systems with which (ii) a taxonomy is designed and (iii) a rigorous classification of DLT systems is made using real-world data and wisdom of the crowd. (iv) A DLT design guideline is the end result of applying machine learning methodologies on the classification data. Compared to related work and as defined in earlier taxonomy theory, the proposed taxonomy is highly comprehensive, robust, explanatory and extensible. The findings of this paper can provide new insights and better understanding of the key design choices evolving the modeling complexity of DLT systems, while identifying opportunities for new research contributions and business innovation., Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10586-021-03256-w., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (© The Author(s) 2021.)

In a so-called overpopulated world, sustainable consumption is of existential importance. However, the expanding spectrum of product choices and their production complexity challenge consumers to make informed and value-sensitive decisions. Recent approaches based on (personalized) psychological manipulation are often intransparent, potentially privacy-invasive and inconsistent with (informational) self-determination. By contrast, responsible consumption based on informed choices currently requires reasoning to an extent that tends to overwhelm human cognitive capacity. As a result, a collective shift towards sustainable consumption remains a grand challenge. Here, we demonstrate a novel personal shopping assistant implemented as a smart phone app that supports a value-sensitive design and leverages sustainability awareness, using experts' knowledge and 'wisdom of the crowd' for transparent product information and explainable product ratings. Real-world field experiments in two supermarkets confirm higher sustainability awareness and a bottom-up behavioural shift towards more sustainable consumption. These results encourage novel business models for retailers and producers, ethically aligned with consumer preferences and with higher sustainability., Competing Interests: We declare we have no competing interests., (© 2021 The Authors.)