Information use in public administration and policy decision‐making: A research synthesis

• Published date: 01 November 2023
• Author: Paola Cantarelli,Nicola Belle,Jeremy L. Hall
• Date: 01 November 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13735

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Information use in public administration and policy

decision-making: A research synthesis

Paola Cantarelli

1

| Nicola Belle

1

| Jeremy L. Hall

2

1

Management and Healthcare Laboratory,

Institute of Management, Scuola Superiore

Sant’Anna, Pisa, Pisa, Italy

2

School of Public Administration, College of

Community Innovation and Education, Orlando,

Florida, USA

Correspondence

Nicola Belle, Management and Healthcare

Laboratory, Institute of Management, Scuola

Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Via San Zeno 2,

56127 Pisa, Italy.

Email: nicola.belle@santannapisa.it

Abstract

This article presents a research synthesis of 162 studies focusing on information

use for decision-making in public administration, management, and policy. The

findings reveal that a significant proportion of work is centered around perfor-

mance management and policy implementation. Notably, around one third of the

reviewed studies adopt a behavioral science perspective. The analysis predomi-

nantly includes civil servants and citizens as the subjects, with quantitative studies

outnumbering qualitative investigations by more than twofold. We identify three

distinct components in understanding information use: the objective features of

information architecture; the subjective mechanisms involving cognitive biases

(i.e., over-/under-reaction to irrelevant information features) and decision noise

(i.e., heterogeneity); and the moderating role of information user typology. Context

should also be taken into account. The article explores how these findings relate

to current societal challenges and emphasizes the potential of mixed-methods,

multisample, and/or multisite research in advancing knowledge in this area.

Evidence for practice

•Navigating information use for decision-making in public administration, man-

agement, and policy is pivotal given the pressure to adopt interventions that

work and the rapid growth in computational capacity.

•Going beyond the actual fragmentation in the understanding of information use

in public decision-making requires distinguishing objective features of informa-

tion, subjective mechanisms of information use, and the moderating role of user

characteristics, while also taking context into account.

•If information use is influenced by behavior, we should broaden our concerns to

include information technology, encompassing data collection, analysis systems,

and the transformation of data into usable information.

INTRODUCTION

With increasing emphasis on big data, frequent admoni-

tion to follow the science, and a heightened attention to

evidence-based practice, there is renewed need to ask

how is information used to make decisions in the context

of public administration? What factors shape the kinds of

information individuals seek, and how do they weigh

information from different sources? Thinking ahead, will

we need to reexamine our understanding with the advent

of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, that

are capable of aggregating and analyzing vast quantities

of data in a way that will reshape information use in pub-

lic decisions? The literature on information use in public

policy and administration is deeply fragmented, and con-

sequently its application is varied and its meaning

context-dependent. While our adoption of the term

“information use”may carry certain connotations for dif-

ferent subsets of that literature, that is, purposeful infor-

mation use from the performance management literature

(Kroll, 2015a; Mikkelsen et al., 2023), we characterize the

term more broadly in order to capture its role in a variety

Received: 28 June 2023 Revised: 26 September 2023 Accepted: 26 September 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13735

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the

original work is properly cited.

© 2023 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

Public Admin Rev. 2023;83:1667–1686. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar 1667

of decision architectures and unique conceptualizations

across our field (which is to say, including, but not limited

to, performance management). Further, our research syn-

thesis specifically explores cognitive biases.

Recent studies provide prescriptive approaches to

evidence-based and best practice integration (Hall &

Jennings, 2008;Head,2008; Newcomer et al., 2023); others

have endeavored to produce a descriptive foundation of

differences that exist across geographies and organizations

(Jennings & Hall, 2012). The behavioral movement brings

with it the use of experimental methodologies that exam-

ine the effects of cognitive bias on the presentation, pro-

cessing, and use of information, which have well

established the human capacity to succumb unwittingly to

errors of judgment in making decisions. But the behavioral

perspective has only recently entered the sphere of aca-

demic inquiry related to public decision makers’use of var-

ied types of information. Stated differently, the kinds of

information available to decision makers are now more

varied and considerably more sophisticated. We are begin-

ning to crack open the shell of independent components

in information use, which necessitates we look more

closely at how and when information is used with an eye

toward how behavioral approaches might impact such

decisions (Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2017).

This study takes a broad look at information use in

public sector decision-making, including policy making,

administrative choices, management and practice, by

analyzing articles that contain at least one of the follow-

ing keywords in the title: information, decision, use, or

data. By conducting a synthesis of the literature, we

explore the fundamental constructs that underpin the

information use in public administration and policy. Par-

ticularly salient to our understanding of this body of

knowledge is the variety and scope of research methodol-

ogies employed to understand information use. Hendren

et al. (2018) point out the potential for a positive quantita-

tive bias to crowd out qualitative studies that seek to drill

down to an individual, organizational, or decision-level

understanding of the cognitive factors at work in informa-

tion processing and use. We are particularly attentive to

work that employs a behavioral perspective, utilizing con-

structs related to errors in judgment in the form of cogni-

tive biases (Bellé et al., 2018). We report on several

characteristics of the state of the art of scholarly under-

standing of information use in public administration and

policy decision-making, so as to pinpoint its main inde-

pendent components and distill three key recommenda-

tions for the advancement of knowledge for theory and

practice alike.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Information is an essential component of decision-

making, and consequentially, an integral component of

public policy implementation and public management.

Simon’s(

1947) work reveals that we curtail information

search by satisficing, rather than optimizing outcomes.

Lindblom’s(

1959) theory of incrementalism, or successive

limited comparisons, builds a framework of policy change

based on limited information seeking, or rather, informa-

tion seeking only at the margin. Fast forward half a cen-

tury, and we find ourselves inundated with new

applications for big data, fueled by rapid growth in tech-

nological capacity and a performance movement that

values collecting data to inform management (Andersen &

Moynihan, 2016; Desmidt & Meyfroodt, 2023; Kroll, 2015a;

Mikkelsen et al., 2022; Moynihan, 2015; Pandey, 2015;

Vogel & Hattke, 2018). Since the turn of the millennium,

the policy making elite have developed a new infatuation

with science, calling for increased use of evidence to

inform policy decisions at nearly every turn. Following the

increasing sophistication of the electorate, and their

attention to science as an answer to difficult questions

from climate change to criminal justice, politicians have

intensified their own admonition to follow the science.

The result is an evidence movement spawned out of

desire to replicate for other areas of policy and practice

what experimental results have been able to achieve

with pharmaceutical schedules. This movement has

been referred to somewhat flippantly as “evidence-

based everything”(Hall, 2021). And finally, a concomi-

tant movement in behavioralism, and behavioral public

administration in particular, has begun to enhance our

focus on the flaws in our information search, processing,

and consequentially our decisions, as a result of cogni-

tive biases and errors in judgment (Battaglio et al., 2019;

Grimmelikhuijsen et al., 2017).

Information plays a central role in public decisions, both

policy making and management, breaching both realms at

key junctures. In the 75 years since Simon’s(

1947)work,we

have come to understand most decisions in terms of

whether or not they are intuitive or rational, and when ratio-

nal, to what extent the information search is attenuated by

satisficing. Information and its use are ubiquitous to public

management, but we have not, as researchers, carved out

an overt focus on information, per se. The advent of

machine learning and artificial intelligence is raising new

concerns about the manner in which information is used to

influence decisions (Grimmelikhuijsen, 2023; Hartmann &

Wenzelburger, 2021). There is growing concern that infor-

mation may be manipulated at various stages of the deci-

sion process to achieve preconceived goals. Evidence itself

has come under attack; President Trump famously forbade

the use of the term “evidence-based”in agency budget

requests (Hall and Battaglio 2018).Thesymbolicuseofevi-

dence rather than the substantive use for improved out-

comes is a real concern (Hall, 2017). In this environment, the

value of information—valid and reliable information—is at a

premium. We need to take stock of the existing knowledge

in our field through a systematic understanding of how

information is treated in public administration research;

doing so will enable us to identify the gaps and weaknesses

1668 USE OF INFORMATION IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION