The Social Cost of Efficiency: How Digital Governance Impacts Social Capital

• In Event: Collaborative Governance in the Digital Era: Accountability, Deliberation and Decentralization

Abstract

Governments have adopted digital service delivery to reduce administrative burden and increase efficiency. Moving service provision online lowers some costs, but it shifts others onto applicants. Administrative burden scholarship shows that burdens are unequally distributed and shape program participation, especially among vulnerable populations. Less is known about which resources help people get through digital systems, and in what contexts. This study examines social capital as one of those resources.

We ask whether social capital is associated with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) take-up among income-eligible families. Drawing on social capital theory and administrative burden theory, we argue that digital delivery can make access more dependent on informal support networks. If so, families with weaker networks are disadvantaged even as the system becomes more efficient overall.

We use quasi-experimental methods with the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a nationally representative longitudinal dataset of approximately 4,800 families, to measure social capital as instrumental support and network engagement. To measure digital delivery, we link survey interviews to monthly data on online SNAP application availability from the USDA ERS SNAP Policy Database.

Preliminary results using national variation in online availability show that social capital is positively associated with benefit take-up in digital governance contexts. We treat these as descriptive patterns; the state-linked analysis using restricted geographic data is in progress.

This study contributes to the administrative burden and digital governance literatures by treating social capital moderator for how policy design affects participation. The findings will show how digital reforms impact burdens.

Author

• Finley Blair, University of Central Florida
  Presenting Author