Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen, Marija Aleksovska, Judith van Erp, Sharon Gilad, Libby Maman, Tobias Bach, Moritz Kappler, Wouter Van Dooren, Rahel M Schomaker, Heidi Houlberg Salomonsen
{"title":"Does enforcement style influence citizen trust in regulatory agencies? An experiment in six countries","authors":"Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen, Marija Aleksovska, Judith van Erp, Sharon Gilad, Libby Maman, Tobias Bach, Moritz Kappler, Wouter Van Dooren, Rahel M Schomaker, Heidi Houlberg Salomonsen","doi":"10.1093/jopart/muae018","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Establishing and maintaining citizen trust is vital for the effectiveness and long-term viability of regulatory agencies. However, limited empirical research has been conducted on the relationship between regulatory action and citizen trust. This article addresses this gap by investigating the influence of various regulatory enforcement styles on citizen trust. We conducted a pre-registered and representative survey experiment in six countries (n=5765): Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, and Norway. Our study focuses on three key dimensions of enforcement style: formalism, coerciveness, and accommodation. We hypothesize that a strict and punitive enforcement style with minimal accommodation will enhance citizen trust. Surprisingly, we found no overall effect of enforcement on trust. However, specifically high levels of formalism (strictness) and coerciveness (punitiveness) exhibited a small positive effect on trust. Furthermore, we observed no discernible impact of an accommodative enforcement style. Additional analyses revealed that the effects of enforcement style were not consistent across country and regulatory domains. This suggests we need to reconsider assumptions underlying enforcement theory, as our findings imply that public trust seems less conditional on heavy-handed enforcement than initially anticipated.","PeriodicalId":48366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muae018","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Establishing and maintaining citizen trust is vital for the effectiveness and long-term viability of regulatory agencies. However, limited empirical research has been conducted on the relationship between regulatory action and citizen trust. This article addresses this gap by investigating the influence of various regulatory enforcement styles on citizen trust. We conducted a pre-registered and representative survey experiment in six countries (n=5765): Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, and Norway. Our study focuses on three key dimensions of enforcement style: formalism, coerciveness, and accommodation. We hypothesize that a strict and punitive enforcement style with minimal accommodation will enhance citizen trust. Surprisingly, we found no overall effect of enforcement on trust. However, specifically high levels of formalism (strictness) and coerciveness (punitiveness) exhibited a small positive effect on trust. Furthermore, we observed no discernible impact of an accommodative enforcement style. Additional analyses revealed that the effects of enforcement style were not consistent across country and regulatory domains. This suggests we need to reconsider assumptions underlying enforcement theory, as our findings imply that public trust seems less conditional on heavy-handed enforcement than initially anticipated.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory serves as a bridge between public administration or public management scholarship and public policy studies. The Journal aims to provide in-depth analysis of developments in the organizational, administrative, and policy sciences as they apply to government and governance. Each issue brings you critical perspectives and cogent analyses, serving as an outlet for the best theoretical and research work in the field. The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory is the official journal of the Public Management Research Association.