Of Saints and Scroungers: Effects of Administrative Burden on Citizens’ Policy Perceptions

Abstract

Administrative burdens potentially influence citizens’ perceptions of welfare policies and beneficiaries. Still, empirical evidence on the effects of different cost categories (learning, compliance, and psychological costs) on citizens’ perceptions is scarce. This research aims to unravel the impact of administrative burden on different levels of policy feedback. To this end, we apply a factorial survey experiment to examine the separate effects of learning, compliance, and psychological costs. Following previous research, we investigate whether and how exposure to administrative burdens affects citizens’ prejudices against beneficiaries, their policy support, and legitimacy judgments. The design includes information cues about administrative burdens in the German unemployment benefit policy “Hartz 4”. The results from a sample of 1.602 German citizens confirm an influence of administrative burdens on policy perceptions. Specifically, exposing participants to information about psychological costs decreases policy support and legitimacy judgments. At the same time, it increases support for spending on the policy. Furthermore, compliance costs decrease legitimacy judgments. However, learning costs have no impact, and prejudices against beneficiaries remain unaffected by administrative burdens, contradicting previous research. The findings provide fine-grained insights into the consequences of administrative burdens, showing that primarily psychological costs shape citizens’ perceptions of policies and the implementing organization.