Can decision transparency increase citizen trust in regulatory agencies? Evidence from a representative survey experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Grimmelikhuijsen, Stephan; Herkes, Feie; Leistikow, Ian; Verkroost, Jos; de Vries, Femke; Zijlstra, Wilte G.
• 署名单位: Utrecht University; Tilburg University; Ministry of Health, Welfare & Sport; Erasmus University Rotterdam; Erasmus University Rotterdam - Excl Erasmus MC; University of Groningen
• 刊物名称: REGULATION & GOVERNANCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1748-5983
• DOI: 10.1111/rego.12278
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 17-31
• 关键词: motivated skepticism; ENFORCEMENT; ACCOUNTABILITY; legitimacy; perceptions; disclosure; SANCTIONS; distance; people

摘要

Decision transparency is often proposed as a way to maintain or even increase citizen trust, yet this assumption is still untested in the context of regulatory agencies. We test the effect of transparency of a typical decision tradeoff in regulatory enforcement: granting forbearance or imposing a sanction. We employed a representative survey experiment (n = 1,546) in which we test the effect of transparency in general (providing information about a decision or not) and the effect of specific types of transparency (process or rationale transparency). We do this for agencies supervising financial markets, education, and health care. We find that overall decision transparency significantly increases citizen trust in only two of the three agencies. Rationale transparency has a more pronounced positive effect only for the Education Inspectorate. We conclude that the overall effect of decision transparency is positive but that the nature of the regulatory domain may weaken or strengthen this effect.