Can transparency promote citizen compliance in China? The role of justice and social identification

Abstract

Although public administration has advocated transparency for achieving citizen compliance, mixed results suggest that the mechanisms behind transparency need further clarification. In this paper, it is examined how transparency promotes citizen compliance in the Chinese context using urban renewal as example and data from interviews and a questionnaire survey. The results show that government transparency can enhance citizen compliance by promoting perceived justice. However, the positive effect of transparency on citizen compliance through justice is only significant in conditions of low social identification. Specifically, the effect of perceived justice decreases with increasing social identification, ultimately leading to a diminished effect of transparency. This study contributes conditional evidence regarding the role of transparency in promoting citizen compliance, which has practical implications for public administration.

Notes

1 The following strategies to control data quality were adopted: For the offline survey, no responses were deleted because participants completed questionnaires under direct supervision by researchers, who ensured their answer time and attention. For the online survey, first, responses with an answer time of less than 3 or more than 20 min were discarded. Second, an attention test question prompted participants to choose ‘5’, and responses of participants who did not select ‘5’ were discarded.

2 For more information about PROCESS, please go to http://www.afhayes.com/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under [Grant number 2019CDJSK01PY04] and [Grant number 2022CDJSKJC23]; National Natural Science Foundation of China under [Grant number 72134002]; Key Projects of Philosophy and Social Sciences Research, Ministry of Education under [Grant number 21JZD029].

Notes on contributors

Bingsheng Liu

Bingsheng Liu ([email protected]) is a professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration at the Chongqing University. He received his PhD at the Tianjin University. His research interests are social governance and sustainable construction management and policy.

Siqi He

Siqi He ([email protected]) is a PhD student at the School of Public Policy and Administration at the Chongqing University. Her research interests are government transparency and behavioral public administration.

Wenxuan Yu

Wenxuan Yu ([email protected]) is a professor at the School of Public Affairs at Xiamen University. He received his PhD at Rutgers University. His research interests are performance management and government transparency.

Yuan Chen

Yuan Chen ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the College of Management and Economics at Tianjin University. She received her PhD at University of Alberta. Her research interests are sustainable urban construction and management and artificial intelligence-based infrastructure management.

Xuan Hu

Xuan Hu ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration at Chongqing University. He received his PhD at Rutgers University. His research interests are e-government and smart city governance.

Jinfeng Zhang

Jinfeng Zhang ([email protected]) is an associate professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration at Chongqing University. She received her PhD at Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her research interests are behavioral public administration and social governance.