Who Supports Administrative Burden? The Role of Deservingness and Beliefs about Welfare

• In Event: Factors Associated with Administrative Burdens and Their Relief

Abstract

Previous research shows that administrative burdens reduce participation in public programs and that reducing such burdens can increase take-up (Bell et al., 2024; Bhanot & Heller, 2022; Baekgaard et al., 2021; Hock et al., 2021; Finkelstein & Notowidigdo, 2021). While existing research on how the general public responds to administrative burden has focused primarily on political identity (Keiser & Miller, 2020; Nicholson-Crotty et al., 2021; Halling et al., 2023; Haeder, 2025), this study examines how people interpret administrative burdens differently depending on their prior views about welfare policy, immigration, deservingness, and political identity.
The study uses a survey experiment embedded in the 2025 Cooperative Election Study. Respondents were randomly assigned to a control vignette describing SNAP as a nutrition assistance program or to a treatment vignette emphasizing administrative requirements, including documentation, interviews, recertification, and work-related conditions. The analysis focuses on three outcomes. Two outcomes draw on adapted items from Baekgaard et al. (2025)’s burden tolerance measurement, capturing acceptance of effort-based access requirements and support for making government services easier to access. The third outcome measures respondents’ willingness to apply for SNAP if they were in the situation described in the vignette.
The results show that administrative burden framing significantly increases agreement that requiring effort is fair by about 0.35 points (p < 0.01). By contrast, the treatment has no meaningful average effect on support for simplification and only a modest negative effect on willingness to apply, which is statistically significant in the model (b = -0.534, p < 0.05). More importantly, the treatment effect on application willingness varies across preexisting beliefs. The negative effect of burden framing becomes weaker as deservingness becomes more restrictive, with a positive interaction between treatment and the deservingness index (b = 3.248, p < 0.05), where higher values indicate stronger beliefs that welfare access should be reserved for those seen as more deserving. The treatment effect also becomes more negative as support for welfare policies increases, as shown by the negative interaction with the welfare policy attitudes index (b = -2.959, p < 0.05), where higher values indicate more supportive attitudes toward welfare policies. Additionally, the negative treatment effect becomes weaker as immigration attitudes become more restrictive, with a positive interaction between treatment and the immigration attitudes index (b = 1.938, p < 0.05), where higher values indicate more restrictive views toward immigration. The treatment effect also differs by political identity, with Republicans responding differently from Democrats (interaction = 1.516, p < 0.05). By contrast, low income, job loss, income shocks, and insurance status do not meaningfully moderate the treatment effect, suggesting that responses to administrative burden are structured less by immediate material vulnerability than by prior beliefs and normative views about welfare access.
These findings suggest that responses to administrative burden are associated not only with the burden itself, but also with individuals’ preexisting beliefs. While existing research has focused primarily on political identity, the results here suggest that views about welfare policy, immigration, and deservingness also help explain how people respond to administrative burden framing.

Authors

• Youngbin Lee, University of Missouri-Columbia
  Presenting Author

• Suhyun Cho, University of Missouri-Columbia
  Non-Presenting Co-Author