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It seems you may be bravely starting a PhD thesis that is so broad that no one has ever attempted it, Twekwase.

For sure, it is highly-culturally dependent. Even within a single territory, the "demand share" culture of some hunter-gatherers is so different from that of their farmer neighbours that their concepts of "community" and "participation" will already be different before anyone even speaks of a "project".

If you want to start creating a theory of participation, one suggestion is that a sense of ownership is likely to be greater if every member has contributed something, even if it is very small in comparison with the true cost.