Amidst the global struggle to achieve herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2, this study investigates whether the number of vaccine options (the size of the choice set) predicts the public’s intention to get vaccinated, and whether this effect depends on their trust in institutions – a system in which a collection of actors – from scientists and vaccine developers to public servants and front-line health workers – is working to fight the pandemic and to develop and approve vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and deliver them to the public. Using an online experiment conducted in Japan (N = 600), the study tested whether choice set sizes of 1, 2, and 4 make a difference in the intention to get vaccinated. The study found that the intention was higher when the subjects were given two vaccine options to choose from, rather than offered a single vaccine, when trust was low, but this effect was negative when the subject trusted institutions highly. The study did not find strong evidence to support the effect of presenting a choice set of four. Based on these findings, this study offers nuanced suggestions for vaccine policy.
{"title":"Vaccine Choice, Trust in Institutions, and the Intention to Get Vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2: Evidence from an Online Experiment","authors":"N. Aoki","doi":"10.30636/jbpa.51.275","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.51.275","url":null,"abstract":"Amidst the global struggle to achieve herd immunity against SARS-CoV-2, this study investigates whether the number of vaccine options (the size of the choice set) predicts the public’s intention to get vaccinated, and whether this effect depends on their trust in institutions – a system in which a collection of actors – from scientists and vaccine developers to public servants and front-line health workers – is working to fight the pandemic and to develop and approve vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and deliver them to the public. Using an online experiment conducted in Japan (N = 600), the study tested whether choice set sizes of 1, 2, and 4 make a difference in the intention to get vaccinated. The study found that the intention was higher when the subjects were given two vaccine options to choose from, rather than offered a single vaccine, when trust was low, but this effect was negative when the subject trusted institutions highly. The study did not find strong evidence to support the effect of presenting a choice set of four. Based on these findings, this study offers nuanced suggestions for vaccine policy.","PeriodicalId":407938,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral Public Administration","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133538439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The recent behavioral turn among economic, administrative and other scholars has resulted in a new way of thinking about policy sciences which emphasizes behavioural insights and the need for greater research into this facet of policy-making. While most early researchers had aspired to the hallmarks of social science, with theoretical modelling on the assumption of microeconomic utility, many now have come to accept that this kind of rationality may be in short supply in practice and that more study of norms, irrationalities and collective action is required. This new focus has led to a behavioural turn in policy theory and practice. Policy design, in particular, now addresses a much wider range of policy tools and is no longer as circumscribed by a priori adherence to utilitarian assumptions about policy behavior as it was in the past. At the same time however, this turn presents new challenges including the irreducibility of incentives for behavior to a single utilitarian currency. We argue that the policy sciences still need a more serious consideration of non-economic incentives, if they are to move away from the traditional utilitarianism which has coloured findings in the discipline for decades.
{"title":"What is Behavioral in Policy Studies?","authors":"Michael Howlett, Ching Leong","doi":"10.30636/jbpa.51.292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.51.292","url":null,"abstract":"The recent behavioral turn among economic, administrative and other scholars has resulted in a new way of thinking about policy sciences which emphasizes behavioural insights and the need for greater research into this facet of policy-making. While most early researchers had aspired to the hallmarks of social science, with theoretical modelling on the assumption of microeconomic utility, many now have come to accept that this kind of rationality may be in short supply in practice and that more study of norms, irrationalities and collective action is required. This new focus has led to a behavioural turn in policy theory and practice. Policy design, in particular, now addresses a much wider range of policy tools and is no longer as circumscribed by a priori adherence to utilitarian assumptions about policy behavior as it was in the past. At the same time however, this turn presents new challenges including the irreducibility of incentives for behavior to a single utilitarian currency. We argue that the policy sciences still need a more serious consideration of non-economic incentives, if they are to move away from the traditional utilitarianism which has coloured findings in the discipline for decades.","PeriodicalId":407938,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral Public Administration","volume":"55 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124718408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recent studies have examined whether, all else equal, there is a general tendency among citizens to perceive public service providers as lower performing than their private counterparts. As public organizations are commonly stereotyped as “bureaucracies”, it is unknown whether the negative image of public organizations is caused by their publicness or by their structural bureaucratic characteristics. This article makes a novel contribution to this literature by disentangling these two variables, and examines to what extent the proclaimed negative effect of publicness on citizens’ performance perceptions is dependent on citizens’ perceptions regarding the bureaucratic structure of public organizations. This is investigated through a survey-experiment conducted among 422 Dutch undergraduate students in public administration. The main findings of the study are that we find no evidence for direct negative effects of publicness, and that the bureaucratic structure of the organization positively affects the degree in which citizens perceive public organizations to be equitable and responsive. These findings suggest that the relationship between publicness and perceived performance is more situational than is assumed in prior studies.
{"title":"Disentangling the perceived performance effects of publicness and bureaucratic structure: A survey-experiment","authors":"Petra E A van den Bekerom, Joris van der Voet","doi":"10.30636/jbpa.42.171","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.42.171","url":null,"abstract":"Recent studies have examined whether, all else equal, there is a general tendency among citizens to perceive public service providers as lower performing than their private counterparts. As public organizations are commonly stereotyped as “bureaucracies”, it is unknown whether the negative image of public organizations is caused by their publicness or by their structural bureaucratic characteristics. This article makes a novel contribution to this literature by disentangling these two variables, and examines to what extent the proclaimed negative effect of publicness on citizens’ performance perceptions is dependent on citizens’ perceptions regarding the bureaucratic structure of public organizations. This is investigated through a survey-experiment conducted among 422 Dutch undergraduate students in public administration. The main findings of the study are that we find no evidence for direct negative effects of publicness, and that the bureaucratic structure of the organization positively affects the degree in which citizens perceive public organizations to be equitable and responsive. These findings suggest that the relationship between publicness and perceived performance is more situational than is assumed in prior studies.","PeriodicalId":407938,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral Public Administration","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123354515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Street-level bureaucrats are assumed to use discriminatory practices against clients to handle high workloads and psychological exhaustion. However, empirical research on the relationships between caseloads, time pressure and discrimination is limited. This article is one of the first to study this topic using a large correspondence experiment that captures actual real-life discriminatory behaviour. Swedish school principals were randomly contacted via email by parents with Arabic- or Swedish-sounding names and with low-SES and high-SES professions who were interested in placing their children at the school. The principals’ actual caseloads and perceived time pressure were captured using both registry and survey data. The results reveal few robust effects; however, we see a slight tendency in the results where principals who have more time for e-mail correspondence may be less likely to discriminate low-SES parents in the e-mail replies.
{"title":"Caseload, time-pressure and discrimination","authors":"Jonas Larsson Taghizadeh","doi":"10.30636/jbpa.42.271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30636/jbpa.42.271","url":null,"abstract":"Street-level bureaucrats are assumed to use discriminatory practices against clients to handle high workloads and psychological exhaustion. However, empirical research on the relationships between caseloads, time pressure and discrimination is limited. This article is one of the first to study this topic using a large correspondence experiment that captures actual real-life discriminatory behaviour. Swedish school principals were randomly contacted via email by parents with Arabic- or Swedish-sounding names and with low-SES and high-SES professions who were interested in placing their children at the school. The principals’ actual caseloads and perceived time pressure were captured using both registry and survey data. The results reveal few robust effects; however, we see a slight tendency in the results where principals who have more time for e-mail correspondence may be less likely to discriminate low-SES parents in the e-mail replies.","PeriodicalId":407938,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral Public Administration","volume":"273 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122154332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nonprofit organizations in the U.S. have been under the pressure to demonstrate their “worthiness” by minimizing overhead costs. Prior experiment studies find that donors respond negatively to high overhead costs when overhead information is highlighted. In reality, donors receive all sorts of information about nonprofit organizations from various channels. While high overhead has been found to reduce donors’ perceived impact and donations, providing other types of tangible information can increase charitable giving by enhancing donors’ perceived impact. When other types of information are available, to what degree overhead aversion still exists? We use two online survey experiments to examine how information on overhead costs and donation use affect giving decisions in a single-organization and two-organization evaluation setting. We found that only a small proportion of people demonstrated overhead aversion when presented with a single organization. There was stronger evidence of overhead aversion when participants were asked to compare and choose between two organizations. Nonetheless, providing tangible information about what donations can buy mitigated overhead aversion in both settings. This study contributes to the growing experimental research on the relationship between overhead ratios and charitable giving, and provides practical insights for nonprofits hoping to ameliorate overhead aversion and increase donation support.
{"title":"Tangible information and charitable giving: When do nonprofit overhead costs matter?","authors":"Heng Qu, J. L. Daniel","doi":"10.30636/JBPA.42.254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30636/JBPA.42.254","url":null,"abstract":"Nonprofit organizations in the U.S. have been under the pressure to demonstrate their “worthiness” by minimizing overhead costs. Prior experiment studies find that donors respond negatively to high overhead costs when overhead information is highlighted. In reality, donors receive all sorts of information about nonprofit organizations from various channels. While high overhead has been found to reduce donors’ perceived impact and donations, providing other types of tangible information can increase charitable giving by enhancing donors’ perceived impact. When other types of information are available, to what degree overhead aversion still exists? We use two online survey experiments to examine how information on overhead costs and donation use affect giving decisions in a single-organization and two-organization evaluation setting. We found that only a small proportion of people demonstrated overhead aversion when presented with a single organization. There was stronger evidence of overhead aversion when participants were asked to compare and choose between two organizations. Nonetheless, providing tangible information about what donations can buy mitigated overhead aversion in both settings. This study contributes to the growing experimental research on the relationship between overhead ratios and charitable giving, and provides practical insights for nonprofits hoping to ameliorate overhead aversion and increase donation support.","PeriodicalId":407938,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral Public Administration","volume":"167 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132299157","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study draws upon previous research to establish if ‘low cost, high volume’ university outreach interventions change subsequent application behavour. The results of two distinct but related randomised controlled trials with two-armed designs (RCT 1, n=2,199; RCT 2, n=1,166) compared application outcomes between recipients and non-recipients of messages from existing undergraduates. The research sought to determine if student role model messaging reinforced prior exposure to the University outreach programme and thereby influenced recipient behavour, in terms of applications and acceptances to that specific institution. The first trial found moderate statistical evidence that sending an email, written by and addressed from an existing undergraduate, to prospective applicants resulted in the opposite of the intended effect; reducing the rate of applications to the University. The second trial found no statistical evidence of any difference in application or acceptance rates amongst the treatment cohort, who received a personal letter in the post from two current undergraduate students, in comparison to the control group who received no correspondence. This reinforces the notion that there is no ‘one size fits all’ programme of widening participation interventions; successful ‘messaging’ is not necessarily transferrable, and can even backfire, given different characteristics of activity providers and recipient cohorts.
{"title":"Undergraduate student role models: Reinforcing the higher education message?","authors":"Michael Kerrigan, Grace Harvey","doi":"10.30636/JBPA.42.252","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30636/JBPA.42.252","url":null,"abstract":"This study draws upon previous research to establish if ‘low cost, high volume’ university outreach interventions change subsequent application behavour. The results of two distinct but related randomised controlled trials with two-armed designs (RCT 1, n=2,199; RCT 2, n=1,166) compared application outcomes between recipients and non-recipients of messages from existing undergraduates. The research sought to determine if student role model messaging reinforced prior exposure to the University outreach programme and thereby influenced recipient behavour, in terms of applications and acceptances to that specific institution. \u0000The first trial found moderate statistical evidence that sending an email, written by and addressed from an existing undergraduate, to prospective applicants resulted in the opposite of the intended effect; reducing the rate of applications to the University. The second trial found no statistical evidence of any difference in application or acceptance rates amongst the treatment cohort, who received a personal letter in the post from two current undergraduate students, in comparison to the control group who received no correspondence. This reinforces the notion that there is no ‘one size fits all’ programme of widening participation interventions; successful ‘messaging’ is not necessarily transferrable, and can even backfire, given different characteristics of activity providers and recipient cohorts.","PeriodicalId":407938,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral Public Administration","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131005289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jeremy T. Barofsky, Ariadna Vargas, Dinardo Rodriguez, Eva Matos, Anthony J Barrows
Government action shapes the perceived and actual costs of citizens’ interactions with the state. By manipulating these costs, policymakers can affect citizens’ willingness to engage with the state, strongly impacting short- and long-term wellbeing. In September 2018, the Trump administration announced its intention to change how an immigrant’s likelihood of becoming a “public charge” would be evaluated. Once adopted, the rule would penalize certain classes of noncitizens for using safety net programs, potentially jeopardizing their application for permanent residence. We hypothesize that this proposed change increased psychological and learning burdens for low-income immigrants well beyond those directly impacted by the rule. Specifically, we used difference-in-differences models to analyze whether the announcement reduced safety net use among two groups exempt from the rule’s provisions: any WIC enrollee and noncitizen SNAP enrollees that are already legal permanent residents, refugees, or asylees. Even though the WIC program was excluded from the proposed rule, we find reductions in overall WIC use after the announcement. In addition, we show that SNAP enrollment decreased differentially after the announcement for noncitizens, nearly all of whom were likely exempt from the rule.
{"title":"Putting out the ‘unwelcome mat:’ The Announced Public Charge Rule reduced safety net enrollment among exempt noncitizens","authors":"Jeremy T. Barofsky, Ariadna Vargas, Dinardo Rodriguez, Eva Matos, Anthony J Barrows","doi":"10.30636/JBPA.42.200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30636/JBPA.42.200","url":null,"abstract":"Government action shapes the perceived and actual costs of citizens’ interactions with the state. By manipulating these costs, policymakers can affect citizens’ willingness to engage with the state, strongly impacting short- and long-term wellbeing. In September 2018, the Trump administration announced its intention to change how an immigrant’s likelihood of becoming a “public charge” would be evaluated. Once adopted, the rule would penalize certain classes of noncitizens for using safety net programs, potentially jeopardizing their application for permanent residence. We hypothesize that this proposed change increased psychological and learning burdens for low-income immigrants well beyond those directly impacted by the rule. Specifically, we used difference-in-differences models to analyze whether the announcement reduced safety net use among two groups exempt from the rule’s provisions: any WIC enrollee and noncitizen SNAP enrollees that are already legal permanent residents, refugees, or asylees. Even though the WIC program was excluded from the proposed rule, we find reductions in overall WIC use after the announcement. In addition, we show that SNAP enrollment decreased differentially after the announcement for noncitizens, nearly all of whom were likely exempt from the rule.","PeriodicalId":407938,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral Public Administration","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115613583","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Experimental studies have just begun to diffuse slowly in nonprofit research, reflecting the general recognition that experimental studies can help nonprofit researchers overcome some limitations of the methods that have traditionally been used. This special issue includes four papers that consider the diversity of experimental research in nonprofit studies. First, a systematic literature review of experimental studies in fundraising provides a nice overview of how experimental studies have been adopted for nonprofit research. The other three articles in this symposium cover important topics that have garnered growing attention in the field of nonprofit management --promoting diversity, donor resistance to the overhead myth, and the role of nudging in crowdfunding donations. Taken together, the four articles in this symposium strengthen our understanding of how experimental approaches can address some of the most pressing questions for the nonprofit and voluntary sector. The studies covered here suggest nearly limitless potential applications of properly designed experimental studies to address unique nonprofit challenges. The symposium issue articles also help nonprofit researchers to shift the research inquiry to individuals to address nonprofit dilemmas through the behavioral lens.
{"title":"Exploring nonprofit dilemmas through a new lens: Introduction to the symposium on experimental and behavioral approaches in nonprofit and voluntary sector research","authors":"Mirae Kim, Kelly LeRoux, D. Mason","doi":"10.30636/JBPA.42.281","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30636/JBPA.42.281","url":null,"abstract":"Experimental studies have just begun to diffuse slowly in nonprofit research, reflecting the general recognition that experimental studies can help nonprofit researchers overcome some limitations of the methods that have traditionally been used. This special issue includes four papers that consider the diversity of experimental research in nonprofit studies. First, a systematic literature review of experimental studies in fundraising provides a nice overview of how experimental studies have been adopted for nonprofit research. The other three articles in this symposium cover important topics that have garnered growing attention in the field of nonprofit management --promoting diversity, donor resistance to the overhead myth, and the role of nudging in crowdfunding donations. Taken together, the four articles in this symposium strengthen our understanding of how experimental approaches can address some of the most pressing questions for the nonprofit and voluntary sector. The studies covered here suggest nearly limitless potential applications of properly designed experimental studies to address unique nonprofit challenges. The symposium issue articles also help nonprofit researchers to shift the research inquiry to individuals to address nonprofit dilemmas through the behavioral lens. ","PeriodicalId":407938,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral Public Administration","volume":"24 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123809016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper uses the COVID-19 pandemic as an extreme case to test whether reference points affect how citizens use performance information on effectiveness, cost, and equality. Drawing on the evaluability hypothesis, the paper argues that citizens are more likely to make decisions based on performance information on equality and disregard performance information on effectiveness and costs when no reference points are available to aid interpretation. The paper uses a pre-registered between-subject conjoint survey experiment on 2,025 Danish citizens to test expectations. Respondents were randomly drawn to rate either one fictive government strategy to combat the Coronavirus—with no opportunity to compare performance information between strategies—or two strategies—with the opportunity to compare performance information between strategies. The strategies varied on effectiveness (mortality rate), costs (overall economic costs) and equality (distribution of the economic costs and access to testing). Results show that when respondents are presented with one strategy, only performance information on equality affects ratings. Strategies with lower fatality and lower economic costs are thus not rated higher than strategies with higher fatality and higher economic costs holding other factors constant. In contrast, when respondents are presented with two strategies, performance information on mortality rate and economic cost plays a significant role for citizens’ ratings. Even during a high-information high salience crisis such as COVID-19, citizens are thus more likely to make decisions based on performance information on equality than effectiveness and cost when no ‘yardstick’ is available. Results imply that performance information on effectiveness and cost risk being drown out by other information easier to interpret if not presented with relevant reference points.
{"title":"Making sense of performance information on effectiveness, costs, and equality during the COVID-19 pandemic. The importance of reference points for citizens’ performance information use","authors":"Maria Falk Mikkesen","doi":"10.30636/JBPA.42.205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30636/JBPA.42.205","url":null,"abstract":"This paper uses the COVID-19 pandemic as an extreme case to test whether reference points affect how citizens use performance information on effectiveness, cost, and equality. Drawing on the evaluability hypothesis, the paper argues that citizens are more likely to make decisions based on performance information on equality and disregard performance information on effectiveness and costs when no reference points are available to aid interpretation. The paper uses a pre-registered between-subject conjoint survey experiment on 2,025 Danish citizens to test expectations. Respondents were randomly drawn to rate either one fictive government strategy to combat the Coronavirus—with no opportunity to compare performance information between strategies—or two strategies—with the opportunity to compare performance information between strategies. The strategies varied on effectiveness (mortality rate), costs (overall economic costs) and equality (distribution of the economic costs and access to testing). Results show that when respondents are presented with one strategy, only performance information on equality affects ratings. Strategies with lower fatality and lower economic costs are thus not rated higher than strategies with higher fatality and higher economic costs holding other factors constant. In contrast, when respondents are presented with two strategies, performance information on mortality rate and economic cost plays a significant role for citizens’ ratings. Even during a high-information high salience crisis such as COVID-19, citizens are thus more likely to make decisions based on performance information on equality than effectiveness and cost when no ‘yardstick’ is available. Results imply that performance information on effectiveness and cost risk being drown out by other information easier to interpret if not presented with relevant reference points.","PeriodicalId":407938,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral Public Administration","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115889105","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The rise of behavioral public administration provides new perspectives – especially from a psychological point of view – to understand public administration theories and the growing interest in using experiments to enhance the internal validity of empirical studies. However, psychology and other social sciences are undergoing a replication crisis where experimental results often do not replicate. One reason for the limited replicability is the publication bias sparked by journals’ preference for significant effects and the resulting incentive to create significant results. This study employs a meta-analytical approach to examine the evidential value of experimental evidence in public administration. It uses the p-curve method to test whether this body of research is dominated by selectively reporting significant results. The analysis includes 172 statistically significant findings published in top public administration journals and shows that the distribution of p values of these findings is right-skewed. Such a distribution indicates that the experimental public administration research contains evidential value, which means it is not solely the result of selective reporting of significant results. Although the analysis shows a good sign, we discuss important practices to further strengthen the validity and reliability of experimental methods in public administration.
{"title":"Everything hacked? What is the evidential value of the experimental public administration literature?","authors":"D. Vogel, Chengxin Xu","doi":"10.30636/JBPA.42.239","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.30636/JBPA.42.239","url":null,"abstract":"The rise of behavioral public administration provides new perspectives – especially from a psychological point of view – to understand public administration theories and the growing interest in using experiments to enhance the internal validity of empirical studies. However, psychology and other social sciences are undergoing a replication crisis where experimental results often do not replicate. One reason for the limited replicability is the publication bias sparked by journals’ preference for significant effects and the resulting incentive to create significant results. This study employs a meta-analytical approach to examine the evidential value of experimental evidence in public administration. It uses the p-curve method to test whether this body of research is dominated by selectively reporting significant results. The analysis includes 172 statistically significant findings published in top public administration journals and shows that the distribution of p values of these findings is right-skewed. Such a distribution indicates that the experimental public administration research contains evidential value, which means it is not solely the result of selective reporting of significant results. Although the analysis shows a good sign, we discuss important practices to further strengthen the validity and reliability of experimental methods in public administration. ","PeriodicalId":407938,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral Public Administration","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124333638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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