It's not merely about the content: How rules are communicated matters to administrative burden

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Baekgaard, Martin; Doring, Matthias; Thomsen, Mette Kjaergaard
• 署名单位: Aarhus University; University of Southern Denmark
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3352
• DOI: 10.1111/puar.13751
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 107-127
• 关键词: structure strategy; policy feedback; efficacy; language

摘要

Research suggests that citizens often abstain from taking up benefits for which they are eligible because of the costs of learning about how to apply for and the compliance and psychological costs associated with taking up benefits. But to what extent can such burdens be altered simply by changing the way rules are communicated? Bridging literatures on administrative burden, communication theory, and cognitive psychology, we theorize and test the causal impact (using a pre-registered randomized survey experiment (N = 2243)) of two prominent aspects of rule communication: information structure and bureaucratic language. Our findings lend support to the expectation that bureaucratic language influences citizens' learning costs as well as their compliance - and to a lesser extent psychological - costs, even when the content of the rules communicated is the same.