How usability of policy transparency promotes citizen compliance: evidence from a survey experiment

Abstract Although policy transparency is praised highly to promote citizen compliance, it sometimes loses its effect in practice due to the lack of scientific design. To better exploit policy transparency, this study examined how the usability of policy transparency promotes citizen compliance, and the role of perceived benefit and descriptive social norms in this mechanism. The results of an online survey experiment conducted in the urban renewal policy domain revealed that, in the implementation of the house expropriation policy, easy-to-understand policy transparency encourages citizen compliance better, since it promotes more perceived benefits. Furthermore, descriptive social norms were found to influence the way perceived benefits promote citizen compliance; more in detail, negative norms were found to increase, and positive norms to decrease, the role of perceived benefit, eventually influencing the effectiveness of policy transparency. This research is a breakthrough for the effectiveness of policy transparency, emphasizing the role of perceived benefit and descriptive social norms in policy compliance.