Human Interest or Hard Numbers? Experiments on Citizens’ Selection, Exposure, and Recall of Performance Information

• Author: Asmus Leth Olsen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12638
• Published date: 01 May 2017
• Date: 01 May 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 3, pp. 408–420.

© 2017 The Authors. Public Administration

Review published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

on behalf of The American Society for

Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12638.

The copyright line for this article was

changed on 26 December 2017 after

original online publication.

408

Asmus Leth Olsen is associate

professor in the Department of Political

Science at the University of Copenhagen,

Denmark. His research lies in the areas of

behavioral public administration, political-

administrative psychology, performance

management, and experimental public

administration. His current research focuses

on the effects of performance information

on citizens and the role of dishonesty for

selection into public sector employment.

His work has appeared in

Political Behavior,

Public Administration Review,

and

Judgment

and Decision Making.

E-mail : ajlo@ifs.ku.dk

Abstract : The abundance of quantitative performance information has motivated multiple studies about how citizens

make sense of “hard” performance data. However, research in psychology emphasizes that episodic information (e.g.,

case stories) often leaves a greater mark on citizens. This contradiction is tested using multiple experiments embedded

in a large, nationally representative sample of Danish citizens. The results stress three differences between statistical and

episodic data. Citizens have strong preferences for statistical data when asked to evaluate an organization. However,

episodic information has in some instances a stronger impact on citizens’ evaluations of an organization and often is

more emotionally engaging than statistics. Finally, when asked to immediately recall recent performance information

about public services, citizens report more elaborate information about personalized stories and experiences than about

statistics. Overall, the results raise questions about the ability of hard performance data to dominate and crowd out

episodic performance information.

Practitioner Points

• Providing citizens with quantitative performance data will not automatically crowd out their reliance on

personal experience or media case stories.

• Episodic experiences with public services provide a more vivid account of performance, which is more

emotionally engaging and easier to recall for citizens.

• Policy makers and managers must pay closer attention to how their performance data can provide citizens

with a more vivid and emotional account of public services to complement the often pallid statistical

performance data.

Asmus Leth Olsen

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Human Interest or Hard Numbers?

Experiments on Citizens’ Selection, Exposure,

and Recall of Performance Information

P erformance measurement is fundamentally about

assigning numbers to the inputs, outputs, and

outcomes of public organizations. Accordingly,

when we refer to performance information, we imply

quantitative performance information. Increasingly,

performance data are intended for the public at large.

This trend has sparked a natural research interest

in how citizens make sense of such numbers. Key

experimental findings show that performance data

clearly affect citizens’ attitudes (Bækgaard 2015 ; James

2011 ). Moreover, citizens draw on reference points

for comparisons (Charbonneau and Van Ryzin 2015 ;

Hansen, Olsen, and Bech 2015 ; James and Moseley

2014 ; Olsen, forthcoming), and they engage in

motivated reasoning and draw on implicit attitudes in

their interpretations of performance data (Bækgaard

and Serritzlew 2016 ; Marvel 2016 ). In addition,

simple framing effects can alter the inferences that

citizens draw from the data (James and Van Ryzin

2015 ; Olsen 2013 , 2015a ).

On the other hand, while the abundance of public

performance data motivates these studies, we have

overlooked the fact that “hard” performance data

is only a subset of the information about public

services that is available to citizens. In fact, empirical

studies show that the dominant source of information

for citizens is often the exact opposite of statistical

numbers: “episodic” information in the form of

informal “human interest” stories from personal

experience, word-of-mouth accounts from friends and

family, and case story coverage of public services in

the media (Grosso and Van Ryzin 2011 ; Kettl 2016 ;

Slattery and Hakanen 1994 ). That is, even in the age

of quantitative performance information, citizens are

still exposed to their neighbors’ experiences from the

hospital or news stories about misconduct by a teacher

at the local school.

At the managerial level, it has also been noted that

episodic information attracts considerable attention

(Bolman and Deal 1991 ; Kroll 2013 ; Mintzberg

1971 ; Moynihan 2008 ). This literature notes that

managers often draw on “soft” information in the

form of case stories from the news, ad hoc meetings,

and casual observations. For instance, Mintzberg

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

and is not used for commercial purposes.