Sector Bias and the Credibility of Performance Information: An Experimental Study of Elder Care Provision

• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Author: Kenneth J. Meier,Miyeon Song,Jourdan A. Davis,Anna A. Amirkhanyan
• Date: 01 January 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13425

Research Article

Sector Bias and the Credibility of Performance Information: An Experimental Study of Elder Care Provision 69

Anna A. Amirkhanyan is a professor

of public administration and policy in the

School of Public Affairs, American University.

Her research on public and nonprofit

management, performance, privatization,

and citizen participation has been published

in various peer-reviewed outlets such as the

Journal of Public Administration Research

and Theory

,

Public Administration Review

,

and others. Her book “Citizen Participation

in the Age of Contracting” examines the

state of citizen participation in the context

of health and human services.

Email: amirkhan@american.edu

Abstract: Reporting government performance to the public is key tool in improving accountability. Some evidence,

however, has shown that individuals’ anti-public sector biases may distort performance information about public

organizations. Using an experimental vignette on U.S. nursing homes, this study fills four gaps in the literature: (1)

the need to include nonprofit organizations rather than just public and for-profit, (2) consideration of the credibility

of the source of performance information, (3) the use of simple commonly used performance metrics, and (4) the

willingness to use services as a performance dimension. We find the public has a general but modest anti-for-profit

sector bias in nursing home care with nonprofits perceived the most positively. Sector biases generally disappear

when clear performance data are presented. The credibility of the source matters, and respondents’ willingness to use

organizational services is more sensitive to both sector bias and performance ratings than are performance measures.

Practitioner Points

• In the field of long-term care, individuals have no anti-public sector bias, and they have more favorable views

of nonprofit organizations than for-profit organizations.

• Perceived sector bias disappears when simple and unambiguous performance information is introduced.

• The source of performance information matters: individuals perceive the information from government and

nonprofit sources as more credible than that from for-profit sources.

• A high degree of credibility amplifies the effect of performance information in shaping individuals’

evaluations of public services.

Public attitudes and perceptions of government and

nonprofit organizations have crucial implications

for the well-being of a nation’s economy and

society as a whole. In a democracy, citizens1 are

expected to engage closely with government by paying

taxes, voting, commenting on new laws, expressing

their feedback on existing services, and co-producing

goods and services. At the same time, public sector

performance has long suffered from negative public

perceptions (Bok 2001). A Pew Research Center (2019)

survey shows that only 17 percent of Americans trust

the government in Washington, D.C. to do what is

right, a figure near historic lows. Since the empirical

evidence has not supported the idea that private

organizations outperform their public counterparts

across several policy areas (Amirkhanyan, Kim, and

Lambright 2008; Andrews, Boyne, and Walker 2011;

Goodsell 2015; Hodge 2018), some scholars have

asked whether the public holds biased perceptions of

government organizations and gives them less credit for

their work.

The growing literature on behavioral public

administration has provided some initial evidence

on individuals’ inability or unwillingness to

favorably evaluate public programs (Baekgaard and

Serritzlew 2016; Battaglio Jr et al. 2019; Charbonneau

and Van Ryzin 2015; Hvidman 2019; Hvidman

and Andersen 2016; James and Van Ryzin 2017;

Marvel 2015, 2016; Zhang et al. 2021). Some

studies suggest that anti-public sector bias, involving

perceptions of public organizations as wasteful

and ineffective, creates cynicism that is resistant to

objective information, especially among those with

less education (Marvel 2015, 2016).

While engaging with service organizations, citizens

often rely on prior assessments of organizational

performance. Whether they select a nonprofit to

contribute to or make a purchase on Amazon,

people are likely to check what others think about

Sector Bias and the Credibility of Performance Information:

An Experimental Study of Elder Care Provision

Jourdan A. Davis is an Assistant Professor

in the Department of Political Science and

Public Administration at University of North

Carolina at Charlotte. Her research interests

include behavioral public administration,

fairness, justice, citizen evaluations, and

public policy.

Email: j.davis@uncc.edu

Miyeon Song is an Assistant Professor

in the School of Public Affairs and

Administration at Rutgers University -

Newark. Her research interests include

public management, organizational theory

and behavior, government performance,

citizen satisfaction, and comparative public

administration.

Email: miyeon.song@rutgers.edu

Kenneth J. Meier is a Distinguished

Scholar in Residence at the School

of Public Affairs, American University,

Professor of Bureaucracy and Democracy

at Leiden University (the Netherlands),

and a Professor of Public Management

at the Cardiff School of Business, Cardiff

University (Wales). His research interests

include social equity, public management,

the role of bureaucracy in democratic

systems, comparative public administration,

and behavioral approaches to public

administration.

Email: kmeier@american.edu

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 82, Iss. 1, pp. 69–82. © 2021 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13425.

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2019

Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and

Voluntary Action Fall Annual Meeting, November 21–23, 2019,

San Diego, CA and at the 2019 meetings of the Association for

Public Policy Analysis and Management, November 7–9, Denver,

Colorado. We would like to thank Saar Alon-Barkat for helpful

comments.

Kenneth J. Meier Miyeon Song

Jourdan A. Davis

Anna A. Amirkhanyan

American University

American University

Cardiff University

Leiden University

Rutgers University – Newark

University of North Carolina at Charlotte