Citizens’ motivated reasoning about public performance: experimental findings from the US and Denmark

Abstract

Recent studies find motivated reasoning in citizens’ processing of information about public performance. Using experiments in the US and Denmark, we examine effects on an accuracy-based task of two forms of motivated reasoning: partisan identity-based reasoning and reasoning from ideology-based governance preferences (favoring either the public or the private sector). The experiments incorporate a political prime, a health care needs prime (to reduce politicization), and a neutral, no-prime, condition. We find that priming citizens to think politically accentuates the influence of partisan identities and governance preferences on reasoning. In contrast, priming about the need for a service reduces these biases. These findings extend knowledge of motivated reasoning in an accuracy-based task and priming with a no-prime benchmark, and confirm some findings of previous studies. Reducing the salience of partisan identities or governance preferences in the presentation of information may help stimulate more accuracy-based reasoning about public performance.

Notes

1 Since our study combines the design in Baekgaard and Serritzlew (2016) with the design in James and Van Ryzin (2017b), this section draws heavily and sometimes verbatim on these articles in its description of survey questions and measures used in this study.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martin Baekgaard

Martin Baekgaard ([email protected]) is a professor of political science at Aarhus University. His research interests include governance regimes, biases in interpretation of information of information, and administrative burden.

Oliver James

Oliver James ([email protected]), PhD, Professor, Department of Politics, University of Exeter, UK. His research focuses on performance information design and use, citizen-public service provider interaction, public management leadership and performance outcomes, and using experiments as a method. Recent publications include Experiments in Public Management Research (Cambridge, 2017, edited with Sebastian Jilke and Gregg G. Van Ryzin) and James, O., Jilke, S., Petersen, C., & Van de Walle, S. 2016. “Citizens' blame of politicians for public service failure.” Public Administration Review, 76(1), 83–93.

Søren Serritzlew

Søren Serritzlew ([email protected]), PhD, is a professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. His research interests include effects of public sector reform, use of economic incentives in the public sector, and democracy.

Gregg G. Van Ryzin

Gregg G. Van Ryzin ([email protected]), PhD, is a professor in the School of Public Affairs and Administration (SPAA), Rutgers University, Newark, USA. His work applies experimental and behavioral methods to various issues in public management, including citizen satisfaction, coproduction, performance measurement, representative bureaucracy, and organizational behavior. He is author (with Dahlia Remler) of Research Methods in Practice (SAGE) and editor (with Oliver James and Sebastian Jilke) of Experiments in Public Management Research (Cambridge).