Psychological Costs of Encounters with Gender and Race Congruence for Families Experiencing Homelessness

• In Event: Bridging the Gap: Supporting Children Experiencing Homelessness Through Schools and Social Services

Abstract

Cooperation, referring to “the process of working together to the same end” in the process of producing goods and services is critical to effective policy implementation (Nicholson-Crotty et al., p. 1119). Focusing on the individual-level, cooperation entails a service user’s being forthcoming with one’s situation, particularly when the services could provide additional support (Riccucci & Van Ryzin, 2017). For instance, for women survivors of sexual assault, if their first interaction with administration is a female officer, they are more likely to report their experience of sexual assault – i.e., cooperate – and have a higher-quality outcome (Meier & Nicholson-Crotty, 2006). Moreover, research on public administration underscores how the interactions between users and administrators can significantly affect users’ cooperative behavior (Baekgaard et al., 2021; Moynihan et al., 2016). Among these factors shaping users’ cooperation, administrative burden has emerged as a focal concept. As one burden, psychological costs entail stigma associated with programs, stress in access services, and the loss of autonomy from power differences (Moynihan et al., 2014). Even when having learned about programs or services and how to access them, the process of accessing them may deter users from receiving the full benefits.  Demographic characteristics or social origins can potentially determine psychological costs experienced, particularly in one-on-one interactions between users and administrators (Meier & Nicholson-Crotty, 2006; Odle et al., 2025). Research on representative bureaucracy suggests that citizens tend to feel more positive toward bureaucracies that mirror the composition of the groups they serve, leading to positive perceptions and increased cooperation (Riccucci et al., 2016). Of those that study the relationship, these studies often experience endogeneity, relying on controlling for observable characteristics or those that do not change over time through fixed effects (e.g., Capers & Smith 2021; Xu & Flink 2022). Yet, the non-random assignment race or gender congruence may bias these results.  Given the gaps in the literature on psychological costs and demographic congruence, we ask, how matching service users with case managers of the same gender or race (i.e., congruence) affects cooperative behavior among services users, focusing on households experiencing homelessness with children. While typically prioritized for services, sensitive questions during the assessment process can retraumatize households with children, decreasing their likelihood to answer and lowering their prioritization. However, matching the gender and race between client and assessor could overcome this cost, reducing disparities. Employing a two-stage least square (2SLS) estimator using plausibly exogenous variation in the availability of a gender and race match, we isolate the effects of gender and race matching on cooperation using client-level data from homeless services and assessment tool, including self-reported survey data on administrators’ demographics. The results show that gender matching associates with lower scores, corresponding to a lower priority for services, whereas race matching associates with higher scores and a greater likelihood of answering “Yes.” These findings suggest that users’ responses may depend on gender and race matching between users and administrators and that the relationship differs in opposite depending on race or gender congruence.

Authors

• Andrew Alfred Sullivan, University of Central Florida
  Presenting Author

• Kyungmin Lee
  Non-Presenting Co-Author