Autonomy of policy instrument attitudes: concept, theory and evidence

Veselý, Arnošt

doi:10.1007/s11077-021-09416-4

Cited by 8 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…First, public managers' preferences for behavioral policy instruments appear to be informed by their assessments of the instrumental use of those instruments, not by their personal perceptions of citizens. As such, this study finds support for classic comparative public policy research, indicating that public managers use instrumental motives and cost considerations when choosing policy instruments (Hood, 2007;Capano & Lippi, 2017;Veselý, 2021).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

“…First, we examined local public managers' preferences for behavioral policy instruments using three specific hypothetical policy cases and three sets of specific, practice-based, policy instruments. Preferences for policy instruments are contextualized and dependent on the policy issue and instrument at hand (Bemelmans-Videc et al, 2010;Capano & Lippi, 2017;Veselý, 2021). The use of behavioral policy instruments might be preferential in one case but not in another, or the use of these instruments might differ depending on the location they are to be implemented in.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Public managers’ trust in citizens and their preferences for behavioral policy instruments: evidence from a mixed-methods study

Migchelbrink

Raymaekers

2022

Behav. Public Policy

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Local public managers increasingly use behavioral policy instruments to influence the behavior of citizens. However, despite their increased reliance on these instruments, there is little evidence on why local public manager would prefer behavioral instruments over classic stick, carrot or sermon-type instruments. We conduct a mixed-methods study, combining a stated-preference survey and two focus groups, to examine whether senior local public managers (directors and deputy directors) in Flanders prefer behavioral policy instruments over classic stick, carrot and sermon-type instruments, and explore whether their trust in citizens (perceptions of citizen's ability, benevolence and integrity) affects these preferences for policy instruments. The results indicate that in some policy areas, such as health, public nuisance and road safety, public managers appear more willing to use behavioral policy instruments than classic sticks and carrots, but not sermons. Furthermore, we find that public managers’ trust in citizens does not appear to significantly affect their preferences for policy instruments, but that political and economic motives do play a role in their preferences for behavioral policy instruments. Finally, the results also indicate that the simultaneous use of behavioral and classic policy instruments (packaging) can help mediate the perceived risks of citizens’ non-compliance with behavioral policy instruments.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 60%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public managers’ trust in citizens and their preferences for behavioral policy instruments: evidence from a mixed-methods study

Migchelbrink

Raymaekers

2022

Behav. Public Policy

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“…This article aimed to test the concept of APIAs (Veselý, 2021). We utilized data from a questionnaire survey, which was fielded on a population of university students at Czech higher education institutions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lastly, we did not test the second premise of the APIA concept— stability of attitudes . APIA expects people's attitudes toward instruments to be consistent in time (Veselý, 2021, p. 442), but remains vague about how long individuals' attitudes have to last or to what extent and in what aspects they can change to still be considered stable. Moreover, measuring stability of attitudes is challenging both theoretically and methodologically and the existing results are far from consistent.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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One hammer for all nails? Testing the autonomy of policy instrument attitudes

Nekola

Petrúšek

Musílková

2022

European Policy Analysis

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Policy design is influenced by stakeholders' attitudes and contextual constraints. While the latter factor is highly variable, attitudes toward policy instruments are deemed more stable across both policy domains and time. This article uses evidence from a cross-sectional survey of Czech university students to examine the autonomy of policy instrument attitudes (APIA) in five policy domains. Only 16% of students endorse a small set of universal instruments for a wide range of applications (so-called instrumentalists) which indicates rather low cross-domain consistency of attitudes (strong APIA hypothesis). Attitudes toward information instruments are correlated within policy domains, thus providing some support for the weak version of APIA.However, this association does not apply to other instruments. The results suggest that the majority of students can be seen as contingentists whose evaluation of the merits of instruments is based on instruments' suitability for a particular problem.

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