Do Opinions of Policy Target Population Deservingness Correlate to Public Service Motivation? Insights from Medicaid

Perceptions of the deservingness of policy target populations play a vital role in the policy process. Yet, little research has modeled assessments of deservingness as a function of core concepts from public administration. Arguably, one of the most robust insights into deservingness assessments is that they correlate to beliefs about who receives a policy's benefits—likely because of how different groups have been socially constructed over time. Using Medicaid as a lens of study, we test whether deservingness assessments also correlate to public service motivation (PSM). We find that deservingness assessments relate to PSM in many models. However, PSM is often insignificant in models that control for racial sentiments. We also fail to find evidence that PSM moderates the relationship between deservingness assessments and beliefs about who benefits from a policy.