Independent Agencies, Regulation‐Compliant Citizens? Evidence From a Survey Experiment on Vaccine Authorization in the EU

Abstract

The effectiveness of regulatory policy in many areas is contingent on citizens adhering to the scientific advice of regulatory bodies. This in turn depends on whether they perceive this advice as credible . One of the biggest threats to regulatory credibility is the concern that regulatory policy can be tainted by short‐term political interests. Consequently, regulation literature points to agency independence as a crucial resource to securing regulatory credibility, which in turn fosters citizen compliance. We test this assumption both observationally and experimentally in the case of the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) risk assessment for the first COVID‐19 vaccine—a prime example of reliance on credibility in regulation under conditions of controversy and concerns over political interference. We conducted a pre‐registered survey experiment with 4000 EU citizens from four countries timed shortly after the vaccine's approval and before its mass distribution. The results provide partial support that independence is beneficial to regulatory credibility and by extension, to regulatory compliance. Citizens who perceive the EMA as more independent found its risk assessment to be more credible and were more willing to take the vaccine. However, our experimental evidence is less conclusive. Thus, while independence might not in and of itself be a “silver bullet” to ensure regulatory credibility and compliance, it does play an important role, and its real‐life substantive significance would scale up considerably at population levels.