Can transparency stimulate coproduction? Evidence from a survey experiment

This paper makes the claim that much of the potential of transparency to engage citizens and contribute toward more responsive public service provision is going unrealized due to issues with implementation. To this end, this... [ view full abstract ]

This paper makes the claim that much of the potential of transparency to engage citizens and contribute toward more responsive public service provision is going unrealized due to issues with implementation. To this end, this study argues that transparency can act as a powerful means of engaging citizens in the process of public service provision, provided the information is presented in a way that resonates with citizens. To explore this proposition we design a series of experiments that intend to shed preliminary light upon the factors responsible for shaping the impact of public disclosure on citizen engagement. In doing so, we contribute to the extant body of public administration literature in two ways. First, while fostering greater citizen engagement is often said to constitute a primary objective of transparency initiatives, there have been very few attempts to empirically gauge the veracity of this theoretical claim. In this respect, this study contributes to public administration theory as it is one of the first studies to empirical examine this theoretical assertion. Second, our analyses offer nuanced insight into the contours of the relationship between transparency and citizen engagement by assessing the extent to which the impact of transparency on citizen engagement may vary according to the way government information is presented to the public. In this respect, our analysis helps to inform effective practice by offering actionable insight into methods of effectively enhancing transparency.
To gauge the impact of transparency on engagement using a series of novel survey experiments. For our survey experiments, we vary the way information is presented to participants according to two dimensions, which previous research has suggested plays an important role in shaping individual responses to information. The first dimension we focus upon is the way the information is framed – prior research suggests that information framed in a negative fashion (15% dissatisfaction rate) will evoke a very different response when compared to information that is framed in a positive fashion (85% satisfaction rate), despite the actual meaning of the message being the same. While there have been attempts to gauge how framing influences citizens perceptions of government performance, there have been few attempts to gauge just how frames influence citizens’ intentions to engage government and participate in coproduction initiatives. The second dimension is the understandability of information. While a host of literature assumes that presenting information so as to improve citizens’ understanding of government activities will empower citizens to act in their best interests, to date there are few attempts to actually gauge how citizens’ understanding of government shapes their evaluations of government and intentions to engage their public sector. To this end, our analysis helps to shed light upon ways in which attitudes and behaviors of informed citizens diverge from those of uninformed citizens.