Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen

Linking transparency, knowledge and citizen trust in government: An experiment

Declining citizen trust in government is an important driver for NPM-style reforms. Increasing people’s knowledge by providing factual knowledge about government performance outcomes is seen as an important way of increasing citizen trust in government. Does this promise hold or is knowledge about performance outcomes not that important? Two rivalling hypotheses are being investigated. One proposition postulates a link between knowledge and trust, whereas the alternative hypothesis borrows from social-psychological research arguing that subconscious and affective cues are more important. In order to investigate this question, this article presents the results of an experiment (N = 658) investigating the effect of performance outcome transparency on citizen trust in a specific government organization. Four groups visited different websites with varying degrees of transparency and performance outcome. The results demonstrate that the link between transparency and trust in a government organization is determined by a mix of knowledge and feelings. Further, the overall effect of transparency is limited. Pre-existing and fundamental ideas about what government does and whether it is benign or not are far more determining than a single experience with a government organization. This article concludes that knowledge about performance outcomes is only part of the link between transparency and trust, and that more realistic views about transparency’s effects should be developed. Points for practitioners Transparency is generally hailed by many as the key to trust in government. This study shows that the magnitude of transparency on citizens’ trust in government is often exaggerated as most people have pre-existing, fundamental beliefs about government which are only marginally influenced by transparency. However, transparency can contribute to maintaining existing trust levels through a mix of people’s cognition and feeling about government. Transparency is necessary, yet professionals in public management and administration should develop realistic expectations about what transparency can really achieve for trust in government.

Transparency of Public Decision-Making: Towards Trust in Local Government?

Online minutes of local councils offer the opportunity to look behind the scenes of local government decision-making. Will this transparency, as promised, lead to higher levels of trust? This issue was investigated by conducting an experiment comparing participants who did not access the available information, people who were only allowed restricted information about the minutes, and those who were shown the full minutes of the local council. Results indicated that people exposed to more information were significantly more negative regarding perceived competence of the council compared to those who did not access the available information. Additionally, participants who received only restricted information about the minutes thought the council was less honest compared to those who did not read them. The relationship between transparency and trust is influenced partly by the perceived credibility of the message on the website. Also, knowledge about the decision-making process appears to shift judgment criteria. People well informed about the process are inclined to base their judgment of perceived competence on this knowledge and less on message credibility. A theoretical explanation for the negative effect of transparency of public decision-making is sought in the expectations of the public versus the reality. A lower perceived competence by those who had access to full information might be explained by a gap between public expectations of rational decision-making and the reality of the chaos involved in public decision-making exposed through transparency.

Communities of Public Service Support: Citizens engage in social learning in peer-to-peer networks.

New Public Management and bureaucratic models fail to acknowledge the value of peer-to-peer cooperation between citizens as a resource for public service support. Social media enable citizens to create environments for sharing information about public services in Communities of Public Service Support. The success of this model for public service support depends on the availability of communities, the level of active participation, and the information content. This paper presents an empirical study of virtual communities of expats in The Netherlands. Our analysis shows that there is a wide variety of virtual expat communities with a high level of participation and valuable content. We conclude that virtual communities play an important role in public service support since they facilitate social learning between citizens.

Experimental public administration from 1992 to 2014: A systematic literature review and ways forward

Purpose – Based on previous inventories, the purpose of this paper is to extend the knowledge on public administration experiments by focusing on their experimental type, design, sample type and realism levels and external validity. The aim is to provide an overview of experimental public administration and formulate potential ways forward. Design/methodology/approach – The authors examine the current state of experimental public administration, by looking at a systematic selection of ISI ranked experimental publications in major public administration journals (1992-2014) and recommend ways forward based on this review. Findings – The review indicates a rise in experimentation in public administration in recent years, this can be attributed mostly to some subfields of public administration. Furthermore, most experiments in public administration tend to have relatively simple designs, high experimental realism and a focus on external validity. Experimental public administration can be strengthened by incre...

Open data for democracy: Developing a theoretical framework for open data use

Open data platforms are hoped to foster democratic processes, yet recent empirical research shows that so far they have failed to do so. We argue that current open data platforms do not take into account the complexity of democratic processes which results in overly simplistic approaches to open data platform design. Democratic processes are multifaceted and open data can be used for various purposes, with diverging roles, rules and tools by citizens and public administrators. This study develops a Democratic Activity Model of Open Data Use, which is illustrated by an exploratory qualitative multiple case study outlining three democratic processes: monitorial, deliberative and participatory. We find that each type of democratic process requires a different approach and open data design. We conclude that a context-sensitive open data design facilitates the transformation of raw data into meaningful information constructed collectively by public administrators and citizens.

Utilization of open government data: A systematic literature review of types, conditions, effects and users

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the literature on the types, effects, conditions and user of Open Government Data (OGD). The review analyses 101 academic studies about OGD which discuss at least one of the four factors of OGD utilization: the different types of utilization, the effects of utilization, the key conditions, and the different users. Our analysis shows that the majority of studies focus on the OGD provisions while assuming, but not empirically testing, various forms of utilization. The paper synthesizes the hypothesized relations in a multi-dimensional framework of OGD utilization. Based on the framework we suggest four future directions for research: 1) investigate the link between type of utilization and type of users (e.g. journalists, citizens) 2) investigate the link between type of user and type of effect (e.g. societal, economic and good governance benefits) 3) investigate the conditions that moderate OGD effects (e.g. policy, data quality) and 4) establishing a causal link between utilization and OGD outcomes.

The Impact of Red Tape on Citizen Satisfaction: An Experimental Study

ABSTRACT Red tape is one of the most often-mentioned nuisances citizens experience with government. However, there is a dearth of red tape research focusing on citizens. Therefore, the primary goal of this article is to analyze the effect of red tape on citizen satisfaction. The secondary goal is to go beyond testing a linear relationship between red tape and citizen satisfaction by examining individual factors that may moderate this relationship. In order to analyze the red tape/satisfaction relationship, we have designed an experiment in which 179 subjects participated. Experiments are still relatively rare in public administration, but are increasingly seen as a rigorous and useful method for theory testing and development. We found that red tape has a strong negative effect on citizen satisfaction, and that this effect is weaker when citizens have high knowledge of political processes. We conclude with implications and a future research agenda.

Reconsidering the expectancy disconfirmation model. Three experimental replications

ABSTRACT The expectancy disconfirmation model (EDM) posits that disconfirmation (the difference between expectations and perceived performance) affects citizen satisfaction. Van Ryzin experimentally manipulated expectations and performance and found a direct effect of performance, but no disconfirmation. We performed: an exact replication; a conceptual replication with extreme manipulations; a conceptual replication that reversed the order of a performance and expectations manipulation. Study 1 and 2 reproduced original findings. In contrast, study 3 indicates that expectation cues are retrospectively used to anchor prior experiences of performance. As the rational assumptions underlying the EDM are increasingly challenged, we need a better understanding of how cognitive biases shape citizen satisfaction.

Promoting State-of-the-Art Methods in Public Management Research

ABSTRACT The field of public management is methodologically underdeveloped as compared to other disciplines. In order to derive the fullest benefits of methodological advancements, the field needs to invest in discussing and deliberating over the state of the art in methodological advances. Using state-of-the-art methods helps to produce knowledge that is useful for scholars and practitioners. This symposium aims to add to and improve the methodological toolkit available to public management scholars. We distinguish three categories that could strengthen the methodological toolkit: underutilized methods (such as ethnography), innovations in current methods (such as the synthetic control method for comparative case studies), and novel methods (such as natural language processing for content analysis). We hope that this symposium encourages scholars to seek for novel and improved methods to produce research that lives up to scientific scrutiny and is valuable for practitioners.

Validating a scale for citizen trust in government organizations

Citizen trust in government at the macro level has been studied by public administration scholars for many years. To further our understanding, assessing trust at the meso level of government organizations is important to more precisely determine effects and antecedents of trust at the organizational level. The organizational trust literature has shown that organizational trustworthiness is multidimensional, but the extant literature has not validated such measures in a public administration context. The proposed scale builds on and adapts an existing organizational trust scale to a public administration context. The ‘Citizen Trust in Government Organizations’ scale is validated using data from two different samples (total n = 991), resulting in a scale of nine items measuring three dimensions: perceived competence, benevolence, and integrity. This scale can be used by other researchers and is valuable to gain a more specific and multi-dimensional understanding of trust in government organizations. Points for practitioners A major problem for government organizations worldwide is the lack of perceived trustworthiness by the public. To tackle this problem, a way to measure it is needed, but at the moment there are only generic measures to assert perceived trustworthiness in a government organization. This article presents a first validation and incorporates three dimensions: perceived competence, benevolence, and honesty. Practitioners can use this scale and adapt to their relevant local context to identify specific trustworthiness problems.