Gender, situational visibility, and discretionary decision-making of regulatory street-level bureaucrats under pandemic emergency: an experimental study in China
基于中国878名警察的情景实验数据，研究发现警察对违规者的宽容度受性别匹配影响，仅当双方均为女性时宽容度显著提高；但情境可见性会削弱性别效应，使警察对女性更严厉、对男性更苛刻。
How is the discretion of police officers influenced by clients’ gender and situational visibility under emergency regulations? To answer this question, this study uses the scenario-based-experimental-survey data collected from 878 police officers from three cities in China under the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that the effect of gender congruence on the leniency of officers is only significantly positive when police and clients are both female. However, situational visibility will weaken the gender effect, reducing the officers’ leniency towards females. Moreover, visibility makes police even harsher towards male violators. The findings provide some practical implications.