The power of relative performance information in competing communications

ABSTRACT

The public administration literature has long recognized the importance of reference points in interpreting performance information. However, little is known about whether invoking reference points can change citizens’ perceptions of performance in competitive information environments. Across three survey experiments with Chinese respondents, we showed that providing informational cues about China outperforming other countries improve citizens’ ratings of government performance. Moreover, competing information does not balance the positive effects. Findings from an independent experiment refute the likelihood that the treatment effect is an artefact of demand characteristics, thus strengthening the internal validity of our findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Reference points
• relative performance information
• survey experiment
• framing effect
• China

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/10.1080/14719037.2024.2372443

Notes

1. The relative performance information in our study could be either positive or negative, depending on whether the reference groups perform worse or better than China. Nevertheless, given that propaganda departments tend to use relative information to create a positive impression of the government, our interpretation of relative information naturally focuses on downward comparisons, that is, emphasizing the adversity of other countries.

2. We have contacted the customer services of Credamo for the surveys’ response rates, but the platform could not provide information on how many people received the invitations. Therefore, we were not able to report the response rates.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China under Grant [22BGL310].