Examining attitudes toward public participation across sectors: An experimental study of food assistance
通过食品援助实验，研究公众参与如何影响人们对政府项目的效率、公平等绩效评价，发现公众参与提升信心，且无部门偏见，客观绩效信息起关键作用。
Abstract Public views of government are linked to trust, coproduction, regulatory compliance, and political participation. This study focuses on factors shaping public attitudes toward government programs by exploring whether direct participation in governance matters for how the public evaluates the performance of government programs. With an experiment involving governmentally funded food assistance, we randomize the presence of public participation, service providers' sector, and third‐party performance ratings and explore their influence on respondents' assessments of the program. We find that respondents have more confidence in the efficiency, equity, and other aspects of performance when ordinary people play a role in designing and implementing the program. We observe no sector bias among respondents. Individual assessments depend on objective performance information from a credible source. These findings have critical implications for the value people place on engagement in governance and point to the role of publicly available data in shaping public views of government.