近年來公民參與的相關理論中，審議式民主的概念逐漸受到重視，學界及實務界嘗試藉由公共審議的過程，解決政策的爭議，提高政策的合法性，並提升公民對於公共政策的知能，促進知情而精緻的偏好。初步的研究顯示公共審議對於參與者個人的政策知識、政策態度及公民知能有顯著的影響。然而，目前學界對於造成公共審議自我轉化效果因素的探討，仍有爭議。究竟參與者的轉化是來自於公共審議中面對面互動「見面三分情」而產生的相互主觀情境效果（搏感情）？還是如公共審議機制原始設計目的所預期，公民透過閱讀資料、小組討論與專家對談等知情、說理與論辯過程（講道理），進而轉化政策態度？本文透過整合幾次不同公民會議的量化問卷資料，釐清各項公民會議機制設計（包含專家演講、可閱讀資料、成員互動、專家詢問…等）所造成的不同審議效果，探討公民會議參與者自我轉化的關鍵因素。研究結果顯示，在面對面的討論之中，「成員互動」的影響，是造成參與者知能提升及政策偏好轉變的最主要因素。在公民會議的過程中，諸如專家詢問、閱讀資料等大量充分的資訊增加未必會帶來公民的自我轉化。反倒是透過彼此的互動與不同角色間的同理，能夠使得公民願意開放自己的心態。此結果對於審議式民主的理論有重要的意涵，對於公共審議的執行層面也有實務的重要性。

Among the theories of civic engagement, deliberative democracy has recently received more scholarly attention. Public deliberation mechanisms have been widely employed by practitioners to resolve policy disputes, to enhance the legitimacy of policy decisions, to increase participants' knowledge of public issues, and to refine public opinion. Preliminary results indicate that public deliberation facilitates self-transformation in terms of knowledge gains, opinion change and strengthening of civic competence. Scholarly efforts, however, have not focused on the factors that contribute to such transformation. Is participants' self-transformation attributed to the feeling of affinity among participants or to stronger reasoning and better arguments facilitated by the process of rational deliberation? To answer this question, this study analyzes pre- and post-conference survey data collected from participants of four “consensus conferences” conducted in Taiwan in 2005. Our results from regression models indicate that the influence of experts, signifying the rationality element of deliberative democracy, does not have significant impact on self-transformation of participants. In contrast, “feeling of affinity” cultivated through face-to-face interactions constitutes the major factor for explaining self-transformation of participants. Such results have important implications for the theory of deliberative democracy and for the implementation of deliberative civic engagement mechanisms.