ATRAPA project researchers Oriol Marquet and Monika Maciejewska participated in the International Congress of Applied Psychology (ICAP 2026), held from July 21 to 25 in Florence, Italy, where they presented recent findings from the ATRAPA case study in Barcelona.
Within the Urban & Built Environments session, Oriol Marquet presented the paper “Fairness and Trust Shape Public Support for Street Transformations: Evidence from Barcelona”, co-authored with Monika Maciejewska. The presentation focused on the role of institutional trust and perceptions of fairness in the public acceptability of Barcelona’s Superilles program.
The research analyzes the social and political factors influencing how citizens respond to urban transformation policies and contributes to the broader objective of the ATRAPA project to understand the determinants of acceptability of urban interventions aimed at sustainability.
Beyond the presentation of ATRAPA’s findings, the congress offered an opportunity to exchange perspectives with researchers from diverse disciplines, including environmental psychology and political science. The discussions provided new insights into how citizens perceive fairness, evaluate public interventions, respond to social and political changes, and react to potential personal costs associated with urban policies.
Participation in ICAP 2026 also allowed for the identification of concepts and methodological approaches that will contribute to the development of the project’s next phases. Some of these elements will be incorporated into the design of future surveys and experiments that ATRAPA will conduct in Milan and Warsaw.
With this participation, the ATRAPA team strengthens its connections with the international community working on public policy acceptability, social behavior, and transitions towards sustainability, and consolidates the project’s interdisciplinary approach to understanding citizen responses to urban transformations.
