Energy justice and citizens' willingness to participate: A discrete choice experiment in a Mexico-United States cross-border region

Citizen participation in energy transitions is needed to address energy injustices. Yet, the effect of energy justice on citizens' willingness to participate remains untested. This study examines whether citizens are more inclined to participate in local energy projects that consider justice factors or not. A representative survey collected data ( N = 768) from a Mexico-US cross-border region. We applied a Discrete Choice Experiment, using a Multinomial Logit Model for aggregate preferences and a Latent Class Choice Model to identify preference variation across citizen types. Interestingly, findings show that especially vulnerable groups and youth expressed greater willingness to participate as local leaders in projects prioritizing distributional justice (i.e., targeting energy-poor households) and procedural justice (i.e., involving civil organizations and multiple governance levels in decision making). This contrasts with common assumptions that vulnerable groups are disinterested in, or insufficiently informed about, participation in the energy transition. Our findings suggest that justice-informed project design may foster broader citizen engagement. The participation, and leadership, of vulnerable groups can be enabled when formal institutions recognize and engage with existing organizations representing these groups, such as traditional Indigenous authorities.