Planning Commissioners Persuasion

Local planning commissioners routinely make high-stakes decisions about land use, housing, and environmental impacts based on complex technical information such as traffic studies and environmental reports. This study applies the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to examine how commissioners process persuasive information under real-world constraints. While commissioners are often highly motivated to deliberate carefully due to public accountability and political consequences, their ability to centrally process specialized technical evidence is frequently limited. Through qualitative interviews and analysis of publicly recorded commission meetings, this project investigates how commissioners shift between central and peripheral processing depending on information complexity, time pressure, and familiarity with the issue. The findings extend ELM to an institutional decision-making context and offer insight into how technical evidence shapes local governance outcomes.