Measuring the intangible: A multidimensional framework for assessing societal engagement in participatory foresight

Abstract

This paper explores the impacts of participatory foresight and societal engagement in policymaking, specifically focusing on Lithuania’s “Lithuania 2050” national visioning process. Participatory foresight integrates diverse stakeholders in strategic processes, yielding tangible outputs like policies and plans, as well as intangible benefits such as increased trust, shared responsibility, and democratic engagement. However, its qualitative and societal impacts often remain underexplored, limiting foresight’s transformative potential. The study proposes and empirically validates a conceptual framework to assess the multidimensional impacts of participatory foresight, emphasizing immediate and intermediate outcomes and focusing on intangible impacts of societal engagement. Using survey data from “Lithuania 2050” co-creators, the research validates diagnostic constructs for participatory foresight impacts using exploratory factor analysis. The proposed final framework bridges theoretical and practical gaps, providing tools for rigorous impact evaluation and highlighting participatory foresight’s potential to enhance inclusivity, resilience, and open governance. Limitations include the need for further validation and long-term impact framework development. This study contributes to advancing participatory foresight impact assessment models, developing valid scales for measuring the impacts of participatory foresight in quantitative research, and fostering open governance.