The efficiency of participatory schemes in environmental planning is an emerging research area, and many issues are not solved yet regarding the assessment of such procedures. It is essential for decision makers to identify improvement opportunities of participatory schemes. We propose an original procedure to address such issue, through a bargaining model from the signaling game literature, which accounts for participation design as well as for agents' preferences, beliefs and bargaining power. The model is calibrated using qualitative data from surveys in French local communities involved in municipal solid waste management. Model simulations are used to test for assumptions on the stakeholder dialogue and explore sensitivity of game outcomes to structural parameters. We propose a set of performance indicators to identify the most effective participatory schemes in achieving convergence in stakeholder positions regarding environmental and land-use planning.