Abstract
Unelected administrative policymakers rely on the domain expertise and technical integrity of scientific information to maintain perceptions of legitimacy. The necessity that regulatory policymakers rely on sound scientific evidence has been formalized at the US federal level through executive order. Yet, the practical impact of scientific evidence on public support and mobilization for policies remains unclear. We investigate whether individual policy activists are more likely to participate in regulatory policymaking when a policy recommendation is substantiated by scientific evidence. We investigate how two separate groups within the public—policy advocates and policy experts—may be affected differentially by scientific evidence. In collaboration with a nationally active policy advocacy group, we conducted a randomized messaging experiment in which members of the group’s e-mail list are sent one of three versions of a policy advocacy message. Results indicate that reference to evidence published in peer reviewed scientific sources increased activism by roughly 1 percentage point among general activists, and decreased activism by 4-5 percentage points among scientific experts.
Highlights
Unelected administrative policymakers rely on the domain expertise and technical integrity of scientific information to maintain perceptions of legitimacy
By measuring activism as clicking on the Take Action link, we almost certainly have false negatives in our measurement. Since they do not benefit from an electoral mandate, regulators must rely on their specialized expertise in establishing the perception of legitimacy regarding the ways in which they use their regulatory policymaking discretion
One potential avenue through which regulatory policymakers can ground their proposals in technical expertise is to draw upon scientific evidence
Summary
Unelected administrative policymakers rely on the domain expertise and technical integrity of scientific information to maintain perceptions of legitimacy. Does this scholarship challenge the degree to which references to science motivate activism for the general public, it suggests that the influence of scientific research may vary between different groups within the public. We study the effects of references to independent scientific research on public mobilization for a policy amongst two groups: one group of technical or scientific experts, and one group of policy activists.
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