Rewarding Success or Fixing Failure? Citizen Responses to Performance Information in Participatory Budgeting

• In Event: State Responsiveness to Citizen Engagement: Effectiveness of Information, Participation, and Social Media

Abstract

Performance information plays a central role in contemporary public management reforms, particularly within performance budgeting systems that seek to align resource allocation with measurable outcomes. In these frameworks, decision-makers are expected to reward high-performing programs and penalize underperforming ones to enhance efficiency and accountability. However, it remains unclear whether citizens—when directly involved in budgeting decisions—apply similar logic. This question is increasingly salient as participatory budgeting expands globally, shifting fiscal decision-making authority from professional administrators to lay citizens. This study examines how citizens use performance information when allocating public resources, focusing on a theoretical tension between two competing logics. A performance-reward logic, rooted in rational choice and principal-agent theory, predicts that citizens will allocate more resources to high-performing services to reinforce efficiency. In contrast, a needs-based logic, informed by theories of distributive justice and public responsiveness, suggests that citizens will prioritize underperforming services in order to address deficits and promote equity. The study asks: when confronted with performance information, do citizens reward success or attempt to fix failure? To test these competing expectations, the study employs a survey experiment embedded in a participatory budgeting scenario. Respondents are asked to rank three public projects—K–12 education, transportation, and parks and recreation—each associated with varying levels of performance information. Participants are randomly assigned to conditions in which one service area is described as underperforming while the others are performing well, allowing for causal identification of how performance cues shape allocation preferences. Preliminary evidence from a field test of the survey instrument provides insights that challenge the needs-based expectation. Respondents were significantly less likely to prioritize underperforming services: the low-performing option was selected as the top funding priority at a rate well below the benchmark expected under equal choice probabilities. Moreover, ranking patterns indicate that participants systematically favored higher-performing services, consistent with a performance-reward logic. These findings suggest that, when presented with performance information, citizens may behave similarly to technocratic decision-makers rather than acting as advocates for redistributive or corrective investment. Because these results are based on a field test with a limited sample, they should be interpreted as preliminary. The full study will provide a more comprehensive assessment of these behavioral patterns. Nonetheless, the findings carry important theoretical and policy implications. If citizens systematically reward success rather than address failure, participatory budgeting processes may inadvertently reinforce existing inequalities in service provision rather than mitigate them. This raises broader questions about democratic responsiveness, the design of participatory institutions, and the role of information in shaping public preferences.

Author

• Andreas D. Sihotang, University of Arkansas - Clinton School of Public Service
  Presenting Author