To achieve a successful energy transition, it is vital to integrate citizens’ needs into government policies through participatory processes. However, offline participatory approaches can be overly intensive which leads to an over-representation of citizens who think that the issue is in their immediate interest. Hence, elected officials often question the extent to which participants’ priorities are a good proxy to represent “the public”. Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) potentially circumvents this by allowing a large and diverse group of citizens to advise their government in an accessible manner. In an online environment, citizens step into the shoes of a policy maker and see which policy options the government considers, while being informed about the impacts. Next, they are asked to provide advice. Because PVE was originally designed as an economic evaluation method, it is unclear whether it can be deployed for effective participation. This study investigates how PVE could be deployed for effective participation of citizens in the energy transition through a real-world experiment in the Netherlands. We aimed to conduct the PVE in line with goals of stakeholders which is the most important requirement for effective participation. We fully achieved three goals that were defined by stakeholders: PVE enables participation of people that normally do not participate (particularly young people); low time investment of civil servants; outcomes of a PVE should be useful for decision-making. We partly achieved two goals: PVE raises awareness among citizens about decisions and implications of the energy transition; participation should be meaningful for citizens.

为了实现成功的能源过渡，至关重要的是通过参与性过程将公民的需求纳入政府政策。但是， 离线参与式方法可能过于密集，导致认为该问题符合其直接利益的公民人数过多。因此，民选官员经常质疑参与者的优先次序在多大程度上可以代表“公众”。 参与式价值评估（PVE）可能通过允许大量不同的公民以无障碍的方式向政府提供建议来规避这一问题。在在线环境中，公民可以进入决策者的行列，了解政府考虑的政策方案，同时了解其影响。接下来，要求他们提供建议。由于PVE最初是作为一种经济评估方法而设计的，因此尚不清楚是否可以将其部署为有效参与的手段。 这项研究通过在荷兰进行的一项实际实验，研究了如何使用PVE来使公民有效参与能源转型。我们旨在按照利益相关者的目标开展PVE，这是有效参与的最重要要求。我们完全实现了利益相关者定义的三个目标：PVE使通常不参与的人（尤其是年轻人）参与其中；公务员的时间投入少；PVE的结果应有助于决策。我们部分实现了两个目标：PVE提高了公民对能源转型的决定和影响的认识；参与对公民应该是有意义的。