Digital regulation, enforcement attitudes, and discretionary decision-making of regulatory street-level bureaucrats during a pandemic emergency: an experimental study in China

Abstract

ABSTRACT How does digital regulation affect the discretionary decision-making of regulatory street-level bureaucrats? We use a survey experimental vignette design (3 × 2 factorial) among 1,301 police officers in China. Results reveal that digital regulation reinforces police officers’ tendency to be strict in their discretionary decision-making, and that enforcement attitudes serve as an intermediary. The presence of both official and private digital regulatory tools reinforced bureaucrats’ tendency to more strictly enforce decisions, and constraint-oriented regulation reinforced their tendency to enforce the law more strictly than incentive-oriented regulation. The findings help clarify the behavioural characteristic of street-level bureaucrats in a context of technological regulation.