Face-to-face with Administrative Burdens: Physiological Measures and Behavioral Consequences of Psychological Costs

• In Event: Administrative Neuroscience

Abstract

The administrative burden framework centers on the potential psychological costs that the public encounters in its interactions with the state. We test key claims of the framework, using a pre-registered laboratory experiment with a mixture of physiological, self-reported, and behavioral measures featuring actual administrative processes involved in accessing public housing. In the study, we present volunteer subjects with actual application processes for public housing, ask them to complete these forms, and then observe the resulting response based on coding of facial expressions. The study is based on Germany. While the policy setting is public housing, the theoretical application applies more broadly to routine application processes that people encounter in many policy domains. The use of facial coding provides a complement to other modes of detecting cognitive processing.

Our laboratory experiment offers causal evidence for four main findings. First, the experience of relatively simple administrative processes generates psychological costs, reflected in physiological measures of emotions based on facial coding. Second, these effects are more pronounced among more vulnerable groups with lower human and administrative capital. This provides support for the claim that administrative burdens are distributed unequally, and may reinforce existing patterns of inequality. It also aligns with claims that those experiencing scarcity will struggle more with administrative processes. Third, the experience of burdens increases behaviors that reduce program take-up, such as mistakenly assuming someone is ineligible for benefits and making errors on forms. Finally, we find that efforts to reduce burdens have mixed results. We tested one widely proposed solution to reducing burdens, which is pre-filling of forms. While this lowered self-reported psychological costs and time spent completing forms, and increased satisfaction with the process, it was not associated with improved emotional valence as measured by facial coding. The findings not only verify that psychological costs arise in citizen-state interactions, they also raise theoretical questions about the temporality of those effects, how they are influenced by individual administrative capital, and how emotional triggers relate to other types of costs.

Author

• Donald Moynihan, University of Michigan
  Presenting Author