ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as the background context and helps to establish e-participation in the larger realm of public participation. It draws attention to the prevalence of public participation activities since ancient times and provides some common definitions of public participation. The importance of public participation as well as the concerns and challenges are discussed. The varied levels of public participation are presented in this chapter to inform that all participation activities do not aim for or attain the same level of engagement. This discussion ties to the levels of e-participation in Chapter 3, which is an important part of the analysis with regard to the research questions of the current study. Most importantly, this chapter provides an overview of various factors that have been studied in the public participation literature. It helps to build a foundational knowledge about what impacts public participation in order to connect to and compare with the factors for e-participation. E-participation, after all, is one of the ways in which public participation is conducted. The last section on the varied mechanisms of public participation establishes e-participation as public participation using information and communication technology (ICT).
