Artificial intelligence, types of decisions, and street-level bureaucrats: Evidence from a survey experiment

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the logic of Simon’s decision-making theory, this study compares the effects of AI versus humans on discretion, client meaningfulness, and willingness-to-implement, and examines the moderating role of different types of decisions on those relationships. The findings show that AI usage has a negative effect on perceived discretion and a positive effect on willingness-to-implement. Conversely, non-programmed decisions tend to have a positive effect on both perceived discretion and willingness-to-implement. Moreover, non-programmed decisions mitigated the effect of AI usage on perceived discretion, while programmed decisions interacted with AI usage to improve client meaningfulness and strengthen willingness-to-implement.

KEYWORDS:

• Artificial intelligence
• street-level bureaucrats
• discretion
• decision-making
• policy implementation

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to helpful comments and suggestions from Ling Zhu, Wenchi Wei, and the anonymous reviewers and the editor at Public Management Review, and seminar participants at the 2021 Workshop for Junior Scholars in Public Administration at Remin University of China. All errors remain our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2022.2070243.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China (grantnumber 21BGL197), and the Ministry of Education of China (grant number 20YJC630140).

Notes on contributors

Ge Wang

Ge Wang is an assistant professor in Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China. He received his Ph.D. in public administration from Huazhong university of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. His research interests centre around behavioural public administration, government social media, online public opinion, etc.

Shenghua Xie

Shenghua Xie is an associate professor at College of Public Administration, Central China Normal University. He received his PhD degree in social sciences at the University of Turku. He has focused his research on urban governance and rural-urban migration in China.

Xiaoqian Li

Xiaoqian Li is an associate professor in Huazhong university of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. She received her Ph.D. in social psychology from Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her research interests are mainly on understanding how human behaviour interact with institutions and technologies.