Transferring Burden? An Experiment of People’s Perception of Administrative Burden

• In Event: Bridging the Gap: How Modern Street-Level Bureaucrats shape Administrative Burden and Citizen-State Interactions

Abstract

Literature on administrative burden examines the onerous experience that people have when they apply and receive public benefits and services (Moynihan, Herd, and Harvey 2014). While most of the literature examines the burden that the public experiences, recent research also explores the administrative burden that street-level bureaucrats receive during the policy implementation process(Mikkelsen, Madsen, and Baekgaard, 2024). Reducing the administrative burden on the public might temporarily shift the burden on the state, but in the long run, it can enhance public access to benefits and increase the effectiveness of public programs (Herd and Moynihan, 2018). Yet, there is a lack of research examining the shift of the burden and how people perceive the trade-offs on who receives the burden. Moreover, factors such as performance and policy design may moderate this relationship and further impact how people trust and perceive the government, as well as their willingness to coproduce

To explore this research question, we are conducting a survey experiment with a 3 by 2 by 2 design in the context of recycling policy. Recycling plays a critical role in addressing environmental sustainability by reducing waste and minimizing the anthropogenic impacts of production and disposal. While most recycling programs focus on plastic, recycling bulky items (e.g., major appliances, furniture, carpets and rugs, vehicle tires) presents significant challenges.According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), these items account for nearly 20 percent of total municipal solid waste (MSW), yet only 18.5 percent are recycled. The complexity associated with managing bulky waste impedes progress toward broader sustainability goals. Municipal recycling efforts inherently rely on intergovernmental coordination and citizen participation. Therefore, understanding how the public interprets organizational and policy implementation information from these complex, collaborative efforts is critical for public management literature.

In this experiment, we manipulate three policy design and implementation aspects, including who receives the burden, which is how the public can recycle large items (self service, services by street-level bureaucrats, county service), prior organizational performance of the agency (better than other municipalities, worse than other municipalities), and the intention of the recycling policy (economic benefit, environmental benefit). This paper contributes to the literature on sustainability and administrative burden by exploring the factors that influence people’s willingness to take on burdens and coproduce in environmental policy, thereby informing managerial decision-making and institutional design within the public sector.

Authors

• Sarah Chung, University of Miami
  Presenting Author

• Xiaoyang Xu
  Non-Presenting Co-Author