{"title":"Affidavit aversion: Public preferences for trust-based policy instruments","authors":"Rinat Hilo-Merkovich, Eyal Peer, Yuval Feldman","doi":"10.1111/rego.12560","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Regulators who aim to reduce administrative burdens often promote trust-based policy instruments, such as legal affidavits or honesty pledges, as substitutes to traditional bureaucratic procedures. However, little is known on how the general public view such instruments, and whether people would actually comply with them, and under what circumstances. Using a series of experimental vignettes, we examine public preferences toward these instruments under different conditions and contexts. We find that overall, people exhibit an aversion to using affidavits, even when they are inexpensive and can save a considerable amount of time compared to the traditional bureaucratic procedure. In contrast, honesty pledges are largely preferred over both the standard procedure and signing an affidavit. We discuss factors influencing the public choice of trust-based instruments and offer recommendations to help policymakers promote public compliance using behaviorally informed policy instruments.","PeriodicalId":21026,"journal":{"name":"Regulation & Governance","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Regulation & Governance","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/rego.12560","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Regulators who aim to reduce administrative burdens often promote trust-based policy instruments, such as legal affidavits or honesty pledges, as substitutes to traditional bureaucratic procedures. However, little is known on how the general public view such instruments, and whether people would actually comply with them, and under what circumstances. Using a series of experimental vignettes, we examine public preferences toward these instruments under different conditions and contexts. We find that overall, people exhibit an aversion to using affidavits, even when they are inexpensive and can save a considerable amount of time compared to the traditional bureaucratic procedure. In contrast, honesty pledges are largely preferred over both the standard procedure and signing an affidavit. We discuss factors influencing the public choice of trust-based instruments and offer recommendations to help policymakers promote public compliance using behaviorally informed policy instruments.
期刊介绍:
Regulation & Governance serves as the leading platform for the study of regulation and governance by political scientists, lawyers, sociologists, historians, criminologists, psychologists, anthropologists, economists and others. Research on regulation and governance, once fragmented across various disciplines and subject areas, has emerged at the cutting edge of paradigmatic change in the social sciences. Through the peer-reviewed journal Regulation & Governance, we seek to advance discussions between various disciplines about regulation and governance, promote the development of new theoretical and empirical understanding, and serve the growing needs of practitioners for a useful academic reference.