IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v234y2024ics004727272400032x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Understanding and increasing policymakers’ sensitivity to program impact

Author

Listed:
  • Toma, Mattie
  • Bell, Elizabeth

Abstract

Policymakers routinely make high-stakes funding decisions. Assessing the value of a program is difficult and may be affected by bounded rationality. We conducted experiments involving U.S. policymakers and the general public, in which participants were given the opportunity to assess the value of various policy programs. Our findings demonstrate that decision aids enhance the responsiveness of respondents to the impact of the programs. We designed and tested two portable decision aids—one that compares programs side-by-side and another that aggregates multiple features of impact into a single metric. The two decision aids increase the elasticity of assessments of program value with respect to impact by 0.20 on a base of 0.33 among policymakers and by 0.21 on a base of 0.21 among the general public. We provide evidence that the cognitive difficulty of translating impact-relevant information into policy decisions helps explain our findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Toma, Mattie & Bell, Elizabeth, 2024. "Understanding and increasing policymakers’ sensitivity to program impact," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 234(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:234:y:2024:i:c:s004727272400032x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105096
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004727272400032X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105096?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:234:y:2024:i:c:s004727272400032x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.