Red Tape,Rule Legitimacy,and Public Service Motivation: Experimental Evidence From Korean Citizens

Abstract

While legitimacy plays a key role in determining if a public sector rule or process objectively qualifies as red tape, it is unclear if legitimacy shapes subjective red tape judgments. We use a sample of South Korean citizens and a vignette-based survey experiment describing applying for a small business COVID-19 relief fund to test the relevance of rule legitimacy for perceived red tape. We find that obtaining a favorable outcome (receiving the fund) reduces perceived red tape, but that neither input nor output legitimacy plays a consistent role. Second, we find that public service motivation moderates the role of both input and output legitimacy on perceived red tape, though in different directions. For those with high levels of public service motivation, output legitimacy reduces perceived red tape. However, for the same group, input legitimacy increases it. We provide a detailed discussion of the contributions of our study.

Keywords

red tape rules legitimacy public service motivation outcome favorability

Introduction

The design of public sector rules contributes to the effectiveness of public organizations, and Bozeman’s (1993) conceptual definition of red tape as rules that consume resources but fail to advance the goals of the organization is at the heart of economic benefit-cost models of public sector rule quality (Pandey, 2021). However, rules are implemented by public employees and shape client interactions with government. Red tape thus has a human dimension and perceptions of it have their origins in “both objective organizational conditions and individualistic or subjective perceptions” (Pandey & Kingsley, 2000; Scott & Pandey, 2005, p. 158). Psychological process models of red tape privilege the experience of rules, assuming both that red tape is a perceptual phenomenon and that attributions of red tape are determined by (social) psychological processes in addition to objective rule characteristics (Davis & Pink-Harper, 2016; Pandey, 2021). Acknowledging the perceptual nature of red tape is a prerequisite to understanding why attributions of red tape can vary between individuals exposed to the same objective rule context. This acknowledgment, however, also entails integrating factors “beyond the rules” (Kaufmann & Feeney, 2014, p. 178) into empirical models of red tape.

Rather than organizational or program goals, citizens can have their own objectives in mind when evaluating rules (Campbell, 2019), and empirical research has repeatedly demonstrated that outcome favorability, or whether the individual achieves the objective motivating their involvement in a given process (Skitka et al., 2003), drives perceptions of red tape (Kaufmann & Feeney, 2014; Kaufmann et al., 2021; Moon et al., 2020). Nevertheless, although the outcome favorability perspective has provided insight into factors affecting citizen attributions of red tape, rules cannot be evaluated solely in terms of outcome favorability for specific citizens. Public processes must be judged based on their contribution to policy objectives, which affect citizens in the aggregate rather than individuals, as well as whether they conform to the normative values associated with government service (Jørgensen & Bozeman, 2007). Although satisfying these values entails that not every interaction with government results in a favorable client outcome, the relevant public values are seldom known or salient to the individual during their interaction with government. Without knowledge of the grounds of rule legitimacy, citizens are left to make judgments about rules based on their individual outcomes, and may draw upon stereotypes of government as inefficient and indifferent to the concerns of citizens (Campbell, 2020; Marvel, 2015).

In this study, we draw on the policy legitimacy literature (Scharpf, 1999) and use a vignette-based survey experiment to test how exposure to sources of rule legitimacy information can affect perceptions of red tape, even as individual outcomes vary. Legitimacy has been an important performance construct in organization studies since the rise of the new institutionalism in the 1970s and 1980s (Deephouse & Suchmann, 2008), and Bozeman’s (1993) conceptual reimagining of red tape employs (il)legitimacy as a core value. However, it is an open question whether the conceptual centrality of legitimacy in organizational models of red tape will translate to a status of equal importance in psychological process models, and a goal of this study is to test its relevance empirically. Drawing on Bozeman (1993), we suggest that rules and the inevitable compliance burden associated with them have output legitimacy to the extent that they contribute to the goals for which they were created. In contrast, a normative principle of democratic theory is that those who will be affected by public policy should have a voice in its creation (Moynihan, 2003), and we operationalize input rule legitimacy as the participation of stakeholders and experts in the rule creation process. We present an experimental test of whether these factors contribute to perceived red tape among citizens who experience both favorable and unfavorable individual policy outcomes.

Second, we tie our study into the public service motivation (PSM) research agenda. Defined by Perry and Wise (1990, p. 368) as “an individual’s predisposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in public institutions and organizations” and variously since (Bozeman & Su, 2015), PSM has been implicated in value-based judgments about policy and performance (Coursey et al., 2012; van Loon et al., 2018). We argue that PSM will be negatively associated with perceived red tape, as those with stronger service motives may more readily attribute benevolent intentions to policy makers. Additionally, we draw on Perry and Vandenabeele’s (2008) reimagining of the PSM construct as an identity-based, contextually activated motivator as well as recent work by Davis, Stazyk, and colleagues (Davis et al., 2020a, 2020b) recasting PSM as a dispositional trait and argue that high levels of PSM will be linked to a stronger weighting of rule legitimacy in an individual’s evaluations of red tape. Due to its association with commitment to the public interest and a willingness to make sacrifices for the good of society, we argue that PSM should amplify the (negative) effect of policy legitimacy on perceived red tape.

We test our hypotheses by embedding them in a vignette-based survey experiment describing a fictional public support program for small businesses affected by COVID-19 in South Korea. The two (positive outcome and negative outcome) by three (no legitimacy information, input rule legitimacy, and output rule legitimacy) experiment was conducted with a sample of 558 Korean citizens in February of 2021. Our results suggest that while the effect of outcome favorability on perceived red tape dominates that of rule legitimacy, legitimacy does affect judgments about rules beyond outcome favorability for those with higher levels of PSM, a finding which has implications for future research on red tape from a psychological process perspective. In the following sections, we review the literature on red tape, outcome favorability, rule legitimacy, and PSM, and discuss how the latter three may jointly determine perceptions of red tape. We describe our experimental design and the reasons motivating our choices, and then present our results. A closing discussion section notes limitations of the study and discusses the contributions it makes to the literature.

Literature Review

Red Tape and Outcome Favorability

Although studies of red tape have long drawn on Bozeman’s definition of the construct as rules that consume an organization’s resources but fail to advance its goals (Bozeman, 1993; Bozeman & Feeney, 2011), theoretical concerns, and methodological conveniences (specifically, the predominance of survey-based studies) have made factors driving the perception of red tape an important area of study (Campbell, 2019; Davis & Pink-Harper, 2016; Pandey, 2021; Pandey & Kingsley, 2000; Scott & Pandey, 2005). Recent attempts to improve measurement have drawn upon an experiential model (Borry, 2016; van Loon et al., 2016), and Pandey (2021, p. 6) suggests that reconceptualizing red tape as “negative perceptual assessments of compliance burden imposed by an organization” can further help close the gap between theory and methodological practice. Moreover, from a perceptual perspective, the different dimensions of rule quality associated with the positivist tradition may not be of equal importance, as individuals will experience burdensomeness but likely have less (or no) notion of the functionality and effectiveness of the relevant rules, which should be judged in relation to organizational rather than individual goals (Campbell, 2019; see also Pandey’s (2021) discussion of the “modularity assumption,” where he further questions the relevance of formal rule effectiveness to evaluations of red tape). van Loon et al. (2016) draw on this point in proposing their “job centered” measure of red tape, where evaluations of red tape are made exclusively in relation to the employee’s job goals. Moving to a perception-centric conceptual model of red tape entails that the explanatory importance of psychological factors increase alongside the objective characteristics of rules and their relationship to formal goals (Kaufmann & Feeney, 2014; Pandey et al., 2017), in turn necessitating more engagement with the psychology literature and the integration of psychological mechanisms into conceptual models.

Classic psychological process models proposed by Pandey and colleagues suggest that evaluations of rules will reflect the psychological needs of the individual, such as the need to maintain a positive self-image, and that when expectations or personal goals fail to materialize, individuals may scapegoat the organization and its rules rather than accept blame (Pandey & Kingsley, 2000; Pandey & Welch, 2005). Rule condemnations are thus employed to resolve cognitive dissonance, and Campbell (2019, p. 545) argues that psychological process models are a major departure from Bozeman’s (1993) positivist approach as an emphasis on individual (and idiosyncratic) needs and goals entails that “evaluations of rule quality. . .vary independently of both the functional efficacy of rules and the legitimacy of the organizational goals that they serve.” Although it would be unwise to jettison entirely the objective characteristics of rules as drivers of rule quality evaluations (Davis & Pink-Harper, 2016), failing to account for how factors “beyond the rules” (Kaufmann & Feeney, 2014), and particularly self-interested (if unconscious) motives, shape rule evaluations will result in an incomplete picture of how such judgments are made.

Recent research in the psychological process tradition builds on the self-interestedness perspective first developed by Pandey and colleagues. As individuals have their own goals and interests foremost in mind when engaging with rules, scholars have naturally sought to test whether outcome favorability, or whether the individual engaging with the given administrative body realizes their objective for doing so, shapes rule judgments. Kaufmann and Feeney's (2014) experimental study with a sample of university students first demonstrated the role of outcome favorability (independent of procedural length) in shaping perceptions of red tape. The authors conclude that Bozeman’s (1993) assumption that “rule burden is the main driver of red tape perceptions” is “challengeable” (p. 187). In a follow up study using a sample of US citizens recruited from Amazon’s TurkPrime service and a similar experimental design, Kaufmann et al. (2021) replicate the outcome favorability-red tape link. Moon et al. (2020) test the outcome favorability red tape hypothesis using an experimental vignette design and a sample of Korean public servants. Their study demonstrates that public servants perceive more red tape in their tasks when they end up with negative outcomes, even when hierarchical procedures are not exacting. These experimental studies compliment the theoretically driven earlier work of Pandey and colleagues and consistently show that self-interested motives and specifically outcome favorability shape judgments about red tape. Our first hypothesis is based on this previous work.

Hypothesis 1: Outcome favorability is negatively related to perceived red tape.

Rule Legitimacy and Red Tape

Not all citizen interactions with the state will result in a favorable outcome and unfavorable outcomes in individual cases may not be the result of poorly performing or designed rules. Although outcome favorability has proved a consistent predictor of red tape perceptions, an empirical framework driven by outcome favorability has limited practical implications when rules are reasonably designed, functional, and determine outcomes. Although the purpose of a given rule or process may not be readily apparent to citizens, from a positivist perspective, it is nevertheless the foundation of that rule’s legitimacy, as it justifies the associated compliance burden and thereby determines whether the rule is red tape or not (Bozeman, 1993; Campbell, 2020; Hattke et al., 2020). From a psychological process perspective, however, it remains unclear which factors beyond outcome favorability determine judgments about rules, and specifically whether legitimacy, central to the positivist model of red tape, has relevance for perceptual models.

In an influential review, Suchman (1995, p. 574) defines legitimacy as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs, and definitions.” Legitimacy in this sense is grounded in conformity or consistency with widely accepted expectations, or what Meyer and Scott (1983) describe as “the adequacy of an organization as theory” (Meyer & Scott, 1983, quoted in Deephouse & Suchman, 2008, p. 50). However, we expect that citizens seldom concern themselves with the subtleties of public sector performance and the diverse values by which it is evaluated (Jørgensen & Bozeman, 2007), and instead may draw upon a more familiar private sector model of performance when evaluating rules. In the absence of other information, public organizations are likely to be rated poorly in terms of performance and red tape (Hvidman & Andersen, 2016), and citizens can have significant anti-public sector biases, unconsciously associating public bureaucracy with inefficiency and other negative characteristics (Marvel, 2015). We expect that in the absence of information signaling the legitimacy of public sector rules, red tape will be perceived as more prevalent for a given process. In other words, without information to the contrary, we expect that a lack of legitimacy will be assumed, and thus greater red tape perceived. In contrast, providing information about the legitimacy of rules, that is, how rules conform to expectations, and specifically in their formulation and function, should reduce the tendency of those evaluating them to condemn them as red tape. Perceived red tape should thus in part be a function of the availability of legitimating information.

Here, we suggest that the legitimacy of rules will be based in at least two sources. All rules are (presumably) formulated for some purpose and, in Bozeman’s (1993) classic formulation, rules have legitimacy to the extent that they contribute to their “functional object” (p. 283). The functions to which a given public sector rule may contribute are diverse and can be linked with a variety of socially valued outputs (Pandey & Welch, 2005). In the most straightforward way, a rule or process associated with a public program should have output legitimacy when it contributes directly and clearly to program objectives, which are themselves widely viewed as desirable. In practice, the performance of any public sector policy or initiative is difficult to measure with precision (Campbell, 2021; Boyne, 2002). Still, a clear signal that a given policy is effectively contributing to its objective is likely to strengthen its legitimacy, and thereby reduce perceptions of red tape. In contrast, a public sector rule or process should have input legitimacy when its creation conforms to deliberative norms, such as the inclusion of relevant stakeholders and those with the requisite policy domain expertise. Although participation in the policy making process can have instrumental benefits (Campbell & Im, 2016; Irvin & Stansbury, 2004), the involvement of the public in the process of policy formulation and design is often seen as a normative imperative which promotes democratic values and citizen engagement (Moynihan, 2003). Our input/output specification of rule legitimacy builds on Scharpf’s (1999) influential dichotomy of input-oriented and output-oriented, where the former refers to legitimacy from citizens’ participation in the political decision-making process and the latter to legitimacy based on “effectively promoting the common welfare of the constituency in question” (Scharpf, 1999, p. 6).

Input and output legitimacy, as we have defined them, are substantively different phenomena, and previous literature suggests that both may be operative factors in judgments about red tape. Some literature suggests that citizens are primarily concerned with output performance, with input considerations remaining as secondary features in assessing the legitimacy of public processes (e.g., Arnesen, 2017). Although the legitimacy of public processes can increase in relevance when performance is itself in doubt (Campbell, 2021), Strebel et al.’s (2019) research suggests that participatory mechanisms are important even when outcomes are good, implying that both input and output legitimacy are important to citizens. Indeed, even when policies are properly implemented and achieved their objectives, they can still be regarded as a failure when procedures do not align with the dominant attitudes of the public (Wallner, 2008). Some literature views the two types of legitimacy as being in a trade-off relationship (e.g., Horeth, 1999; Katz & Wessels, 1999). In sharp contrast, Migchelbrink and Van de Walle (2020, p. 273) suggest that input and output legitimacy can be thought of as “two sides of the same coin.” We expect that information about both flavors of legitimacy will be associated with lower levels of perceived red tape.

Hypothesis 2a and 2b: Input and output rule legitimacy are negatively related to perceived red tape.

In addition to directly influencing perceptions of red tape, we expect that rule legitimacy and outcome favourability will function as competing mechanisms in evaluations of rules. Intuitively, even when one is dissatisfied with how a policy influenced their personal well-being, the dissatisfaction would be dampened when information about rule legitimacy is provided, whether it be input legitimacy or output legitimacy. Without any information about sources of rule legitimacy, citizens are likely to rely heavily on their own experience, specifically whether their interaction with the state resulted in a positive or negative outcome, as the dominant factor in rule judgments. Research also shows that individuals have faith in the legitimacy of the decision-making process when they feel that their voice is heard (Mosley & Wong, 2021). Organizational justice theorists have studied the interactive effects of procedural fairness, which bears a family resemblance to rule legitimacy, and outcome favorability. Brockner and Wiesenfeld (1996) show that outcome favorability affects the impact of procedural fairness on individuals’ reactions. In a related vein, Brockner et al. (1997) find that procedural fairness moderates the relationship between outcome favorability and individuals’ reactions to decisions. Grootelaar and van Den Bos (2018) find that benefiting from a judicial decision, along with the importance of the matter, moderates the relationship between perceived procedural justice and trust judges’ decisions. Although there is less literature about the relationship between output legitimacy moderating outcome favorability, the two constructs are in some ways more directly comparable, with one focusing on outcomes at the individual and one at the policy level. We suggest that condemnations of rules as red tape will be lessened with the goal of the policy itself and the contribution of rules to it are made salient.

Hypothesis 3a and 3b: Input and output legitimacy negatively moderate the effect of outcome favorability on perceived red tape.

Public Service Motivation, Rule Legitimacy, and Red Tape

While outcome favorability and rule legitimacy are hypothesized to have general effects, individuals differ in the knowledge of public sector processes, policy preferences, and public service motives. Understanding the effects of PSM in public organizations and beyond has assumed a place of central importance in the public administration literature. PSM is associated with the view that bureaucratic motivation cannot be reduced to rational, self-interested choices (or to what Downs, 1967, p. 84 refers to as “pure self-interests”), but is also formed by affective and normative motives linked to public institutions (Bozeman & Su, 2015; Perry & Wise, 1990). Empirical research has linked PSM in the public sector to a variety of generically important phenomena including job satisfaction, commitment, tenure and turnover intention, and career success (Harari et al., 2017). PSM has also been linked to behaviors specifically relevant to the public sector including beliefs about public participation (Campbell et al., 2016; Coursey et al., 2012), prosocial behaviors (Houston, 2006), the development of expertise to overcome agency problems (Gailmard, 2010), and whistle-blowing (Brewer & Selden, 1998), among others.

PSM ranks with red tape as among the few concepts native to public administration (Davis & Stazyk, 2017; Perry & Vandenabeele, 2015, p. 693), and over time Perry and Wise’s (1990) early and influential definition has been superseded by more precise formulations (Bozeman & Su, 2015). Perry and Vandenabeele’s (2008) describe the concept a component of individual identity that acts as a source of self-regulation and determines how strongly public values operate as factors in decision making, a theory some studies have explicitly tested (Campbell & Im, 2016; Coursey et al., 2012). More recently, Davis et al. (2020a, p. 1318) define PSM as “a constellation of altruistic dispositional traits” that varies between individuals. From this perspective, PSM is not strictly a species of motivation but rather a component of one’s character or temperament that predisposes one toward altruistic behavior in specific contexts (see also Davis et al., 2020b). In both of these formulations, PSM functions as a stable characteristic that influences how information is processed, orienting the individual toward prosocial values and actions. A number of studies have linked PSM and red tape directly.

In an influential work in the psychological process tradition, Scott and Pandey (2005) link the constructs explicitly, arguing that public managers with higher levels of PSM, especially those with a high level of “attraction to public policy making,” are more likely to understand the burdens entailed in administrative processes and thereby perceive them as having lower levels of red tape. Building on Pandey et al. (2001), they use attribution theory to interpret these results: individuals with high levels of PSM are more likely to make an internal attribution to sources of potential work frustration, and thereby face them with more resilience. Similarly, Moynihan and Pandey (2007) show that red tape negatively affects PSM, and it is reasonable to assume that bi-directional causality is likely (Pandey & Stazyk, 2008, p. 107). Davis and Stazyk (2014) suggest that those driven by PSM are more sensitive to the performance-destroying impacts of red tape and provide evidence that they judge organizational reforms, including New Public Management style reforms potentially at odds with prosocial values, more favorably when they reduce red tape.

Like red tape research, research on PSM has generally focused on public employees. However, PSM is not the sole domain of public sector workers (and, of course, not all public sector workers are motivated primarily by PSM [Campbell & Im, 2019; Liu & Tang, 2011]), and a number of studies probe the effects of PSM among citizens. Following the organization research cited above, we expect there to be negative relationship between PSM and perceived red tape. In particular, Davis et al. (2020a) suggest that a trait-based approach to PSM may be most relevant when there are fewer situational ques to guide behavior. In a low information setting, those with higher levels of PSM may be inclined to reference a pro-social understanding of government processes, essentially giving government the benefit of the doubt when evaluating rules. Those with lower levels of PSM, in contrast, may more readily rely on a (public sector-derived) efficiency-oriented framework, condemning all rule burden as red tape.

Hypothesis 4: Public service motivation is negatively related to perceived red tape.

We expect PSM to have a direct and negative relationship with perceived red tape. However, although much research (and especially early research) on PSM focuses on linking it directly with organizational phenomena of interest, many scholars have also conceptualized PSM as an individual difference that exerts a moderating effect on contextual factors (e.g., Bottomley et al., 2016; Campbell et al., 2014; Coursey et al., 2012; Giauque et al., 2012; Im et al., 2016; Potipiroon & Faerman, 2016; Quratulain & Khan, 2015; Resh et al., 2018). As a stable personality trait (Davis et al., 2020a) linked with concern about societal outcomes and democratic norms (Brewer et al., 2000; van Loon et al., 2018) as well as higher tolerances for bureaucratic proceduralism (Scott & Pandey, 2005), we argue that information about rule legitimacy is likely to have a larger effect in determining the content of judgments about red tape for those with high levels of PSM compared to those with weaker service values. PSM has long been linked with the normative values of the public sector (Moynihan, 2003; Perry & Wise, 1990), and thus may be more receptive to participatory input rule legitimacy, associating it with lower levels of red tape. Davis et al. (2020b) link PSM explicitly to empathy and understanding, and suggest that therefore PSM will produce stronger negative emotional reactions when witnessing others in conflict or distress. Similarly, we expect a stronger positive emotional reaction when receiving information about participation in the rule making process or good performance, both of which are connected with the interests of others. In contrast, van Loon et al. (2018) provide evidence that output legitimacy may also have a stronger appeal to service-oriented individuals. Their study implies that PSM as a motivational force is activated only when the given employee perceived that their job has a high societal impact potential. Although we treat PSM as a moderator in this study, the Perry & Vandenabeele (2008) perspective described above suggests that providing information with public content, that is, information about rule legitimacy, should strengthen the role of public values in decision making and an awareness that the need for efficiency should be balanced against other legitimate values. Since individuals with stronger service motives are more concerned about the overall well-being of the society, we predict that PSM will amplify the negative effect of rule legitimacy on red tape.

Hypothesis 5a and 5B: Public service motivation negatively moderates the relationship between input and output legitimacy and red tape.

Our theoretical model is shown in Figure 1.

Data and methods

Sampling and Experimental Procedures

In order to test our hypotheses, we conducted a vignette-based experiment on February 18, 2021. An experimental vignette methodology provides a high degree of both internal validity and experimental realism (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014). Although vignette studies cannot be free from concerns of the trade-off between mundane realism and the need to limit the number of vignettes (James et al., 2017, p. 127), we were careful that our experimental materials would be meaningful for readers. Given the ongoing pandemic, we selected the application procedures for COVID-19 relief funds for small businesses, which have been adversely affected by the pandemic and the measures adopted to slow it. Small business owners (or self-employed workers) are traditionally regarded as representative of the middle-class in Korea (Arita, 2003). Korea’s self-employment rate reached 25.1% in 2018, much higher than the average 15.3% among the members of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (Yoon & Choi, 2019), meaning that government restrictions on small businesses, for example, a 9 pm curfew and ban on private gatherings of five or more, heavily impacted the livelihood of the middle class. Additionally, therefore, the economic hardships of small business owners emerged as nationwide issues. Considering the highly politicized nature of COVID-19 policies, there were disagreements on the scope and level of government support necessary for small businesses. However, such businesses bore much of the costs associated with COVID containment policies and we believed that a policy program to support them would likely be read as uncontroversial. This being said, we were careful to control for political orientation in our analysis (as described below).

To conduct a between-subjects vignette experiment, we contracted a local survey company with experience in collecting data for social science research. To increase representativeness of South Korean citizens and minimize sampling error, we instructed the survey company to use a stratified sampling based on gender, age, and residential area (metropolitan and non-metropolitan). The survey starts with an online consent form, informing respondents that participation was voluntary and that the researchers guaranteed anonymity. A total of 558 Korean citizens participated in the experiment. All participants responded to a set of demographic questions, along with other factors that might influence perceived red tape, including overall perceptions of the way the government is handling COVID-19, public service motivation, and knowledge of politics. Next, participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions, after which all participants estimated the level of red tape in described in the vignette (see Appendix A for the study flow).

We used a two (positive outcome and negative outcome) by three (no information of legitimacy, input legitimacy, and output legitimacy) factorial design where the first factor is outcome favorability and the second factor is rule legitimacy. First, all respondents read about the following hypothetical situation:

Imagine that you are a small business owner. You learn about a government financial support program available to some businesses affected by COVID-19. Funds are limited, and the government developed various criteria to select eligible businesses. To apply for financial support, you must submit detailed information about your business. It takes time and effort to understand how the different categories in the application apply to your case. There is a significant amount of paperwork to complete.

This opening sets the context for the later evaluation of red tape. Again, at the time of the survey, numerous stories were reported in the local news about the hardships of small businesses, which contributes to the realism of the vignette. It also describes a limited government relief program and a level of rule burden associated with applying for it. We note two additional things about this opening.

First, our research question focuses on the link between rule legitimacy (and outcome favorability) and perceived red tape, and therefore we hold the level of rule burden constant across all conditions. While some experimental research on red tape, including the original outcome favorability study, does vary the level of rule burden across conditions (Kaufmann & Feeney, 2014; Kaufmann & Tummers, 2017; Tummers et al., 2016), others implement the vignettes in ways similar to our approach here, holding it constant (Campbell, 2020; Kaufmann et al., 2020, 2021). Second, we note that studies of red tape that describe the phenomenon in a vignette need to balance the need to create a realistic scenario with the need to signal that a non-trivial amount of rule burden is associated with the process. Our goal was to center the experience of the individual in the vignette. As such, rather than using proxy concepts such as formalization or delay to capture rule burden, we tap the administrative burden literature, which suggests that learning costs (among other things) are typical of the experience of rule burden for citizens (Moynihan et al., 2015), and write that “it takes time and effort” to understand all the paperwork. To capture compliance burden, a “primitive concept” in the red tape literature (Pandey, 2021), we state that the paperwork is “significant.”

Next, all groups read a version of the outcome favorability conditions:

You submit your application for funding. After some time passes, you are informed that your application was accepted (rejected) . Your business is (not) eligible to receive financial support from the government.

No additional information about policy legitimacy was included in the vignettes of group (1) and (2). Thus, we consider these two groups as control groups as it will reflect the independent effect of outcome favorability on perceived red tape, while having no exposure to information about rule legitimacy. The expectation was that group (1) (positive outcome favorability) will report a lower level of red tape than group (2) (negative outcome favorability).

Respondents assigned to groups (3) and (4) read an additional paragraph that demonstrates the government’s effort to represent stakeholders’ opinion in making administrative decisions, that is, input legitimacy. This paragraph reads as follows:

Policymakers invited economists and other experts to participate in designing the eligibility criteria for financial support. Policymakers also consulted with numerous small business owners about the specific challenges they faced. Suggestions made by both experts and small business owners were integrated into the design of the application and selection process.

This paragraph was written to reflect genuine participation in the policy making process, with the participatory process resulting in a policy outcome that actively reflects the concerns of stakeholders and not mere “window dressing” (Yang, 2005, p. 277). Here, we note that the source of input legitimacy lies in the process of which the rules were generated. By notifying that not only bureaucratic expertise, but also laypeople and stakeholders’ opinions were reflected in the rules, we expect that this paragraph will signal that the rules were generated consistent with democratic norms.

Finally, respondents assigned to group (5) and (6) read an additional paragraph that demonstrates output legitimacy. This paragraph reads as follows:

The program was later evaluated to determine if it achieved its goals. It was deemed successful. The funding prevented many businesses from laying off employees or going bankrupt, and thereby produced significant social and economic benefits for the country.

Performance in the public sector is a complex phenomenon. In designing the output legitimacy condition, we describe both policy outputs and broader outcomes, the latter of which are ultimately what the policy is created to address (Behn, 2002). While it is reasonable to expect that not all citizens would agree on the policy of providing relief funds, especially considering the politicization of COVID-19 policies (e.g., subsidizing certain groups of citizens), we argue that imbuing the overall economy is a much clear and universal goal that most citizens would agree.

Measures

The dependent variable of this study, perceived red tape, was measured in two ways. First, we use the item: “If red tape is defined as ‘burdensome administrative rules and procedures that have negative effects on the organization’s effectiveness’, how would you assess the level of red tape in the application process?” Respondents were asked to rate the level of perceived red tape on a scale of 1 to 10. This measure is also referred to as the general red tape scale (GRT scale), which has been used in many studies (DeHart-Davis & Pandey, 2005; Kaufmann & Feeney, 2014; Pandey & Scott, 2002; Rainey et al., 1995). However, red tape scholars have raised questions of the measurement validity of the GRT scale, pointing out that the term “red tape” has negative connotations (Feeney, 2012, p. 428) and that a single indicator cannot capture the intricate nature of red tape (Borry, 2016, p. 577). Therefore, we use the Three-Item Red Tape (TIRT) scale proposed by Borry (2016) as a secondary measure of the construct. The TIRT scale is composed of three items—“The application review process is burdensome/unnecessary/ineffective”—on a 5-point scale ranging from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree.” Cronbach’s alpha for the TIRT scale is .63.

We employ several sets of controls including demographic variables, knowledge of politics and perceptions of COVID-19. First, respondents were asked of their gender (1 = male, 2 = female), age, residential area¹ (1 = metropolitan, 2 = non-metropolitan), and perceived household income (1 = lowest income group, 10 = highest income group). It is also reasonable to assume that how individuals think of COVID-19 policies and the extent to which an individual was affected, either physically or economically, would affect one’s response to perceived red tape. We use three questionnaires that measure these perceptions on a 10-point scale (Porumbescu et al., 2020): “How would you evaluate the performance of the current administration in responding to this pandemic? (1 = Extremely Bad, 10 = Extremely Good),” “How serious of a threat do you think the virus is? (1 = Completely overblown, 10 = Extremely serious), and “How serious did the virus cause you economic damage? (1. No damage at all, 10. Extremely serious).” To measure PSM, we adopted five items from Kim’s (2017) reduced scale: “Meaningful public service is very important to me,” “I am often reminded by daily events about how dependent we are on one another,” “Making a difference in society means more to me than personal achievements,” “I am prepared to make enormous sacrifices for the good of society,” and “I feel sympathetic to the plight of the underprivileged.” All items are measured on a 5-point Likert scale, and the Cronbach’s alpha is .75.

Results

Before the main analysis, we first check whether groups were homogenous in terms of demographic characteristics to assess whether our randomization was effective. We run a set of ANOVAs to compare the mean values of covariates across groups. Results show that there is no statistically significant between-group difference in terms of covariates except for economic hardships from COVID. A Tukey-Kramer pairwise comparison test revealed that one group (negative outcome and input legitimacy) had a slightly higher value compared to the average. We control for this in our multivariate analyses (see Appendix for descriptive statistics, correlations, and ANOVA results).

In order to test our hypotheses, we run a series of ordinary least squares regressions on the GRT scale and the TIRT scale. Table 1 shows the results to test hypotheses H1, H2a/b, and H4. First, we expected in H1 that outcome favorability has a negative effect on perceived red tape. The results are supportive of H1, showing a negative coefficient for both scales, which implies that personally benefiting from the policy decreases perceived red tape. Second, we expected in H2a/b that input and output legitimacy will have a negative effect on perceived red tape. Our results partially support this hypothesis, since only output legitimacy turned out to have a diminishing effect on red tape (Model 2). However, this holds only for the GRT scale. We find no evidence to support H2a (input legitimacy) for both measures. Third, we expected that PSM will have a negative effect on perceived red tape (H4). Again, we find partial evidence to support this as PSM is statistically significant only in Models (3) and (4), that is, models with the TIRT scale as the dependent variable.

Table 1.

Regression Results.

	Red tape (GRT scale)		TIRT scale
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
Outcome favorability	−0.47** (0.15)	−0.47** (0.15)	−0.15** (0.05)	−0.15** (0.05)
Input legitimacy		−0.31 (0.19)		−0.02 (0.07)
Output legitimacy		−0.42* (0.19)		−0.01 (0.07)
PSM	−0.09 (0.15)	−0.09 (0.15)	−0.10* (0.05)	−0.10* (0.05)
Sex (1 = male, 2 = female)	−0.03 (0.17)	−0.05 (0.17)	−0.15* (0.06)	−0.15* (0.06)
Age	0.00 (0.01)	0.00 (0.01)	0.01* (0.00)	0.01* (0.00)
Area (1 = metropolitan, 2 = non-metropolitan)	0.26 (0.16)	0.25 (0.16)	0.08 (0.06)	0.08 (0.06)
Income	0.04 (0.05)	0.04 (0.05)	−0.00 (0.02)	−0.00 (0.02)
COVID: perceived government performance	−0.13*** (0.04)	−0.13*** (0.04)	−0.07*** (0.01)	−0.07*** (0.01)
COVID: perceived threat	0.07 (0.04)	0.07 (0.04)	0.00 (0.01)	0.00 (0.01)
COVID: economic hardships	0.12*** (0.03)	0.13*** (0.03)	0.06*** (0.01)	0.06*** (0.01)
Knowledge of politics	0.06 (0.11)	0.06 (0.11)	0.01 (0.04)	0.01 (0.04)
Political ideology	0.18 (0.11)	0.18 (0.11)	0.12** (0.04)	0.12** (0.04)
Constant	5.27*** (0.79)	5.52*** (0.80)	3.13*** (0.28)	3.14*** (0.28)
Observations	558	558	558	558
R-squared	0.105	0.113	0.163	0.163

Standard errors in parentheses.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Several controls are associated with perceived red tape. In particular, those who rate the government of Korea’s performance in pandemic control highly reported lower levels of red tape in the hypothetical vignette. In contrast, those who reported significant economic hardships due to the pandemic reported more red tape. Both of these relationships are in the expected direction. These strong, consistent effects across all models have practical implications as well as implications for model interpretation, which we return to below.

Hypotheses H3(a/b) and H5(a/b) are tested by including interaction terms in the model. The results are shown in Table 2. First, we find that there is insufficient evidence to support the hypothesis that rule legitimacy, either input legitimacy (H3a) or output legitimacy (H3b), moderates the effect of outcome favorability on perceived red tape. Second, we expected that PSM would moderate the effect of input legitimacy (H5a) and output legitimacy (H5b) on perceived red tape. The interaction effect for PSM and input legitimacy is statistically significant for both GRT and TIRT scales (Models 7 and 11), however, the coefficient is positive rather than negative, suggesting that input legitimacy amplifies perceived red tape as PSM rises. In contrast, the interaction between PSM and output legitimacy is negative and statistically significant, which is consistent with the assertion that PSM would negatively moderate the effect of rule legitimacy on perceived red tape. We also controlled for demographic characteristics such as age, sex, residential area, and occupation (see Appendix for a full regression table).

Table 2.

Regression Results (Interaction Models).

	Red tape (GRT scale)				TIRT scale
	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)	(11)	(12)
Outcome favorability	−0.52** (0.19)	−0.36 (0.19)	−0.48** (−0.15)	−0.46** (0.15)	−0.11 (0.07)	−0.19** (0.07)	−0.16** (−0.05)	−0.15** (0.05)
Input legitimacy	−0.38 (0.26)	−0.31 (0.19)	−2.28* (−0.99)	−0.30 (0.19)	0.04 (0.09)	−0.02 (0.07)	−1.07** (−0.35)	−0.02 (0.07)
Output legitimacy	−0.42* (0.19)	−0.25 (0.25)	−0.42* (−0.19)	2.10* (0.99)	−0.01 (0.07)	−0.06 (0.09)	−0.01 (−0.07)	0.85* (0.35)
Outcome favorability* Input legitimacy	0.13 (0.33)				−0.11 (0.12)
Outcome favorability* Output legitimacy		−0.33 (0.33)				0.10 (0.12)
PSM	−0.09 (0.15)	−0.09 (0.15)	−0.28 (−0.17)	0.17 (0.18)	−0.10 (0.05)	−0.10* (0.05)	−0.20*** (−0.06)	−0.01 (0.06)
Input legitimacy × PSM			0.58* (−0.29)				0.31** (−0.1)
Output legitimacy × PSM				−0.75** (0.29)				−0.26* (0.10)
Constant	5.53*** (0.80)	5.45*** (0.80)	6.23*** (−0.87)	4.67*** (0.86)	3.13*** (0.28)	3.16*** (0.29)	3.51*** (−0.31)	2.85*** (0.31)
Observations	558	558	558	558	558	558	558	558
R-squared	0.114	0.115	0.12	0.125	0.164	0.164	0.177	0.172

Standard errors in parentheses.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

To better understand the contrasting moderation effects of PSM on input and output rule legitimacy, we made a series of graphs. Figure 2 displays the moderating effect of PSM on the two different types of rule legitimacy. The plots show that individuals with high levels of PSM (1 SD above the mean) perceived less red tape when exposed to information about output legitimacy, with the predictive probabilities for values of perceived red tape negative for high levels of PSM. In contrast, output legitimacy had little effect for those with low levels of PSM. Confidence intervals contain zero for low levels of PSM, both in the GRT and TIRT scale. On the other hand, information about input legitimacy had a negative effect for individuals with low levels of PSM than those with higher levels. Although there are minor differences in effect size, the results are consistent across both GRT and TIRT scales. We discuss our results in detail in the next section.

Figure 1.

Conceptual model of the relationship between rule legitimacy, public service motivation, and red tape.

Figure 2.

The moderating role of PSM on rule legitimacy.

Discussion

In this study we sought to move beyond the outcome favorability framework (Kaufmann & Feeney, 2014; Kaufmann et al., 2021) to test a model of perceived red tape driven by input and output rule legitimacy. Public sector values are rich and varied (Jørgensen & Bozeman, 2007), and both the means by which decisions are made as well as their broader impact on outputs and outcomes can act as sources of legitimation for public sector processes (Lindgren & Persson, 2010; Scharpf, 1999). Our mixed empirical findings, however, call into question the relevance of input and output rule legitimacy for perceived red tape. Instead, we find that only outcome favorability has a consistent impact across red tape measures, suggesting that the legitimacy concept, central to classic positivist models of red tape (Bozeman, 1993), may not survive a transition to a more psychologically-oriented approach (Pandey, 2021). However, we also argued that PSM would be associated to a relative sensitivity and concern with input and output rule legitimacy, amplifying the impact of each on perceived red tape. We find consistent evidence of a moderating effect. However, only output legitimacy interacts with PSM in the expected way, having a stronger negative effect on perceived red tape as PSM increases. In contrast, we found that input legitimacy increases perceived red tape for those with higher levels of PSM. Together, these results have implications for red tape theory as well as public management more generally.

To help put these in context, we first discuss some limitations of our research design, as well as several choices we made that are not strictly limitations, but do raise the need for future research. The first of these relates to the thematic content of the vignette. Although referencing a plausible COVID-19 small business government support program may have contributed to the mundane realism of the study design, is not an unambiguous benefit. The pandemic has been an omnipresent theme in public discourse in Korea for over 1 year and continues to be a force of (largely unwelcome) social and economic change. Moreover, the results of the regression analysis show that pandemic-specific factors, including the perception of the government’s overall performance in dealing with it as well as the associated economic hardships experienced by the respondent, have consistent and significant effects on perceived red tape. Despite controlling for these important effects, we cannot know whether other pandemic-specific opinions contributed to decision-making in the experiment. Future research might address this concern by selecting more generic theme.

Second and in contrast, the mundane realism of our study may be threatened to the extent that our sample did not consist exclusively of small business owners. We note three considerations that can temper this concern. First, although Korea has a number of exceptionally large multi-national companies (Samsung, Hyundai, LG, etc.), the number of workers these firms employ is vanishingly small in terms of overall employment, and thus the plight of small and medium sized businesses would be familiar to almost anyone answering our survey. Second, 48 respondents (or about 8.6% of the sample) did identify as small business owners. We found no differences in terms of perceived red tape between this group and non-business owners. Finally, we note that it is common in public administration experiments to ask respondents to imagine themselves playing a potentially unfamiliar role, for instance asking students to imagine themselves as budgetary officials (Moynihan, 2013) or college lecturers (van Veen-Dirks et al., 2021). This being said, we cannot conclude with certainty that the unique characteristics of the sample or small business emphasis of the vignette in some way influenced the results.

A third limitation of our study relates to our implementation of input/output legitimacy in the experimental materials, which may be challenged on the grounds of conceptual validity. Although we reference Scharpf (1999) as a theoretical precedent to our approach, participation in the rule making process in particular may not perfectly capture input legitimacy. Our implementation may moreover be fundamentally ambiguous. As one reviewer of this manuscript pointed out, is it the inclusion of stakeholders and experts in the rule-making process that is the source of legitimacy (i.e., a normative grounds), or is it rather the advice they provide (a more instrumental grounds)? Although we had the normative framework in mind when designing the vignette, we cannot rule out that the latter is how it was interpreted by respondents. Manipulation checks are commonly used in the experimental psychology literature (Ejelöv & Luke, 2020) (and sometimes by public administration scholars) as a means to confirm that a treatment has been successful. However, manipulation checks are not without their own dangers, potentially framing an intervention in a way that introduces novel psychological processes (Hauser et al., 2018). In future research, addressing the conceptual validity issue is essential to determine the relevance of the legitimacy construct to theories of red tape.

We treat our results in turn. First, this study is the third to experimentally replicate the outcome favorability-perceived red tape connection. Although replications are less glamorous than the production of novel findings (and therefore scarcer), they are necessary for public administration research to secure a scientific footing (Walker et al., 2017). We note this first modest contribution to the literature. However, our principal goal was not (only) replication, but rather establishing a boundary condition for the direct effect. Although there are cases in which bureaucratic discretion may determine access to public services and programs (Brodkin & Majmundar, 2010), categories are not infinitely flexible, and we sought to establish whether information about rule legitimacy would determine perceptions of red tape beyond individual outcomes. Our results provide only weak support for this position: not only did input and output legitimacy fail to moderate outcome favorability, each had a weak to trivial direct impact on perceived red tape. From a practical perspective, this is disappointing, particularly in the case of input legitimacy, given that participation has a theoretical link public acceptance of difficult decisions (Irvin & Stansbury, 2004). In contrast, administrators often have only tentative control over policy outputs (Behn, 2002; Campbell, 2021). However, if even rule effectiveness, the paramount legitimating factor in the classic approach, fails to move judgment, it is unclear precisely what administrators may do to improve public perceptions of the bureaucracy.

On the other hand, in linking rule burden (a fixed characteristic of policy implementation) and red tape (a fundamentally perceptual phenomenon), this study provides a conservative test of the role of legitimacy in red tape perceptions. In designing the experimental materials, we chose to describe a non-trivial level of rule burden as well as hold it constant across experimental conditions. This approach was consistent with our research question, which focused on the potential for rule legitimacy to weaken the perceived relationship between burden and red tape. However, we can imagine alternative scenarios in which rule burden itself varies and that, under more moderate conditions, legitimacy would play a larger role. Different sets of rules can of course be more or less burdensome and effective, and both rule burden and rule legitimacy should be thought of as occurring on a continuous rather than categorical scale, as our experiment specifies them. Secondly, participants evaluated levels of red tape when the stakes for them were non-trivial (i.e., they were told to imagine themselves owning a depressed business and applying for the government grant). This was necessary to replicate the outcome favorability finding, and is also broadly consistent with the psychological process approach, where the experience of the individual is emphasized (Pandey, 2021). However, while citizen satisfaction is itself a legitimate measure of public sector performance, when evaluating rules it cannot be the only one, and the positivist literature implies a detached observer who is more capable of evaluating rules on a cost-benefit basis (Campbell, 2019). This is related to the modularity assumption (Pandey, 2021), about which currently there are mixed findings. Hattke et al. (2020) find that providing information about the legitimate goals that burdensome rules serve has little effect on emotional reactions to them. In contrast, Campbell (2020) does not incorporate individual outcome favorability (thereby potentially preserving the detached observer status of experiment participants) and finds that the link between rule burden and red tape is indeed significantly weakened when information about legitimate goals is made salient. Although the current study finds little evidence of a direct impact of rule legitimacy on perceived red tape, this result should be interpreted within the scope of the study’s experimental design.

Our findings with regard to the role of PSM are mixed. First, we hypothesized that PSM would be negatively related to perceived red tape. Although the coefficients for PSM are negative, the relationship is only significant for the TIRT scale, suggesting, to the extent that there is an empirical effect, it is weak. The theoretical link between the two constructs is compelling, and influential public organizational research repeatedly found a negative relationship between PSM and red tape (Moynihan & Pandey, 2007; Scott & Pandey, 2005). However, judgments about red tape pertaining to a single policy instance are different from those made by public employees about levels of red tape in their organizations, which are based in the holistic and concrete experience of organizational life. Public sector work (hopefully) provides opportunities to realize altruistic motives, a primary component of the PSM disposition (Kim & Vandenabeele, 2010), whereas judging the level of red tape in an external application process does not. Moreover, a tendency to ascribe to government officials virtuous motives or assume the necessity and legitimacy of government rules may be balanced in this case with their impact on clients. More research is necessary to untangle the empirical effect, if any, of PSM on red tape.

In contrast to weak or null direct effects, we wound that PSM moderates the impact of legitimacy on perceived red tape. For output legitimacy, this effect was in the expected direction: higher levels of PSM amplify the negative effect of output rule legitimacy on red tape. PSM is associated with care for society at large, and our results suggest that when a given process contributes to valued outcomes, is it less likely to be condemned as red tape. Future research may probe this “impact justifies the means” approach, for instance, by examining the mechanism in more detail, such as whether its basis is cognitive or affective. Recent PSM research that takes a dispositional approach to the concept may suggest the latter (Davis et al., 2020a, 2020b), however, PSM’s less studied attraction to policy making dimension is rooted in an instrumental logic (Perry & Wise, 1990; Campbell, Forthcoming). Research may also examine whether decreasing the tangible burdensomeness of rules would remove the countervailing influence suggested in the preceding paragraph and thereby strengthen the interaction effect. From a practical perspective, although our result may suggest that a publicization of positive impact may improve citizen evaluations of the bureaucracy (commensurate with individual levels of PSM), as discussed above, public managers have much less control over the impact of public policy. Although the results presented here are encouraging, more research is necessary to lay bare the nature as well as implications of the PSM-rule output legitimacy-red tape relationship.

Our results also suggest that PSM moderates the impact of input rule legitimacy on red tape. However, the direction of the moderating effect—we found that input legitimacy is linked with higher levels of perceived red tape as PSM increases—is at odds with our expectations. This result is somewhat puzzling as several studies have linked PSM to positive attitudes about public participation (Coursey et al., 2012), including in South Korea (Campbell & Im, 2016), and PSM has a theoretical association with the normative values underlying participatory efforts. There are several potential mechanisms underlying this unexpected effect. First, although we expect PSM to be attracted to the normative value of participation, this conjecture is based on the assumption that PSM sensitizes individuals to public sector processes in general. While we hypothesized that the impact of input legitimacy on perceived red tape would increase with higher levels of PSM, it may be the case that those with strong service motives are cannier in recognizing the inherent tradeoffs involved with participatory efforts. Participation can have normative value; however, it can also be a drain on public sector resources, have little instrumental benefit, and function itself as a source of red tape and bureaucratic delay (Irvin & Stansbury, 2004; Moynihan, 2013). It may be the case that our vignette describes a situation in which the benefits of participation-based input rule legitimacy are unlikely to justify its costs. If citizens are suffering and there is an obvious way for government to help, public consultation and deliberation about the design of the application process may be understood as wasteful bureaucratic formalism. A darker interpretation would reference Perry and Wise’s (1990, p. 371) conjecture that public service motives may drive individuals to “carry their commitment beyond reasonable boundaries,” expressing a willingness to dispense with input legitimacy in “fanatical” pursuance of a favored outcome.² In contrast, our finding may be specific to the East Asian administrative context, where views of the state continue to be colored by expectations about paternalism and expertise and a lower premium is placed on the openness of the public governance system (Im et al., 2013; Kasdan & Campbell, 2020). Consistent with this, Kim (2009) found that the attraction to public policy making dimension of PSM failed to hold in two Korean samples, and Kim and Campbell (2015) argue that performance-based legitimacy is a powerful frame in Korean citizen judgments about government. If public values in Korea favor output over input legitimacy, this may go some way in explaining our results.

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix E.

Regression Results (All Covariates Included).

	GRT						TIRT
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
Outcome favorability	−0.47**	−0.47**	−0.52**	−0.36	−0.48**	−0.46**	−0.15**	−0.15**	−0.11	−0.19**	−0.16**	−0.15**
Input legitimacy		−0.31	−0.38	−0.31	−2.28*	−0.3		−0.02	0.04	−0.02	−1.07**	−0.02
Output legitimacy		−0.42*	−0.42*	−0.25	−0.42*	2.10*		−0.01	−0.01	−0.06	−0.01	0.85*
Outcome favorability* Input legitimacy			0.13						−0.11
Outcome favorability* Output legitimacy				−0.33						0.1
PSM	−0.09	−0.09	−0.09	−0.09	−0.28	0.17	−0.10*	−0.10*	−0.1	−0.10*	−0.20***	−0.01
Input legitimacy × PSM					0.58*						0.31**
Output legitimacy × PSM						−0.75**						−0.26*
Sex (1 = male, 2 = female)	−0.03	−0.05	−0.05	−0.05	−0.05	−0.04	−0.15*	−0.15*	−0.15*	−0.15*	−0.16**	−0.15*
Age	0	0	0	0	0	0	0.01*	0.01*	0.01*	0.01*	0.00*	0.00*
Area (1 = metropolitan, 2 = non-metropolitan)	0.26	0.25	0.25	0.24	0.25	0.26	0.08	0.08	0.08	0.08	0.08	0.08
Income	0.04	0.04	0.04	0.04	0.03	0.04	0	0	0	0	0	0
COVID-government	−0.13***	−0.13***	−0.13***	−0.14***	−0.13***	−0.13***	−0.07***	−0.07***	−0.07***	−0.07***	−0.07***	−0.07***
COVID-threat	0.07	0.07	0.07	0.07	0.08	0.07	0	0	0	0	0	0
COVID-economic	0.12***	0.13***	0.13***	0.13***	0.12***	0.12***	0.06***	0.06***	0.06***	0.06***	0.06***	0.06***
Knowledge of politics	0.06	0.06	0.06	0.06	0.06	0.04	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01	0.01	0
Political ideology	0.18	0.18	0.18	0.19	0.18	0.17	0.12**	0.12**	0.11**	0.11**	0.12**	0.11**
Occupation
Student (base)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Private sector	0.1	0.06	0.07	0.06	0.09	0.14	−0.19	−0.18	−0.19	−0.18	−0.17	−0.16
Public sector (state-owned enterprises)	−0.4	−0.34	−0.35	−0.35	−0.3	−0.3	−0.41*	−0.40*	−0.40*	−0.40*	−0.38	−0.39*
Government employee	−0.32	−0.46	−0.46	−0.45	−0.44	−0.41	−0.28	−0.28	−0.29	−0.29	−0.27	−0.26
Self-employed	−0.23	−0.32	−0.32	−0.31	−0.26	−0.19	−0.23	−0.23	−0.23	−0.23	−0.2	−0.19
Professional	−0.59	−0.6	−0.6	−0.58	−0.53	−0.54	−0.25	−0.24	−0.25	−0.25	−0.21	−0.22
Not working	−0.32	−0.32	−0.32	−0.31	−0.3	−0.25	−0.26	−0.26	−0.26	−0.26	−0.25	−0.24
Other	−0.36	−0.42	−0.42	−0.41	−0.36	−0.3	−0.41*	−0.41*	−0.42*	−0.42*	−0.38*	−0.37*
Constant	5.27***	5.52***	5.53***	5.45***	6.23***	4.67***	3.13***	3.14***	3.13***	3.16***	3.51***	2.85***
Observations	558	558	558	558	558	558	558	558	558	558	558	558
R-squared	0.105	0.113	0.114	0.115	0.12	0.125	0.163	0.163	0.164	0.164	0.177	0.172

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Yongjin Ahn

Notes

Author Biographies

Yongjin Ahn is a doctoral candidate at the Sol Price School of Public Policy in the University of Southern California. His research focuses on public management, behavioral public administration, and bureaucratic politics. He holds a master of public administration degree from Seoul National University and a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Korea University.

Jesse W. Campbell teaches Public Administration at Incheon National University in South Korea. He is interested in comparative public administration, and specifically in identifying features of the national administrative context that determine the initiation, configuration, and effectiveness of administrative reform. He is also interested in issues with unique relevance to East Asian (and particularly Korean) public administration.

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