The Effect of the EU‐Brand on Citizens’ Trust in Policies: Replicating an Experiment

• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Author: Jasper Eshuis,Thijs Geest,Erik Hans Klijn,Joris Voets,Magdalena Florek,Bert George
• Date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13367

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

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Abstract: Karens et al. (2016) conducted an experiment to measure the effect of the European Union (EU)

brand on citizens’ trust in policies. Experiments conducted with economics students in Belgium, Poland, and The

Netherlands showed a consistently positive and significant effect of applying the EU brand, on trust in the policies.

This study presents seven replications conducted several years after Karens et al.’s experiments. The replications

show no significant effects of the EU brand on trust in policies. These findings demonstrate that brand effects

may vary over time. To identify a population effect size across all experiments, a meta-analysis was conducted.

The meta-analysis shows that—overall—the EU-brand has a small but significant positive effect on citizens’

trust in policies. The article tests earlier findings, and discusses intricacies of conducting replications. It elaborates

explanations for the results in the replications, and the replication problems with experiments based on evaluative

conditioning.

Evidence for Practice

• Brands of public organizations have the ability to influence citizens’ perceptions of the organizations’

policies.

• The effect of a public brand may vary over time, and even become non-significant during certain periods.

Therefore, it is important to measure the impact of your brand longitudinally, instead of only once in time.

The Importance of Replications in Public

Administration

Public administration research has seen an

upsurge of experimental research (e.g.,

Grimmelikhuijsen et al.2017; James, Jilke, and

van Ryzin2017). This has helped the discipline to

better study a wide range of causal effects, e.g., causal

effects of public brands (Alon-Barkat and Gilad2017;

Teodoro and An2017), red tape (Wesley and

Tummers2017), and cultural stereotypes in applicant-

assessment (Baekgaard and George2018).

The Importance of Replication

However, following concerns in the wider social

sciences about the robustness and replicability

of findings in experimental research (Braver,

Thoemmes, and Rosenthal2014; Open Science

Collaboration2015), concerns about replicability of

experiments have been raised in PA as well (Walker,

James, and Brewer2017). Context and timing are

important in the field of public administration, which

may create extra limitations in terms of replicability

of experiments in PA research (Walker, James, and

Brewer2017). This raises questions about validity

of earlier experimental research in PA, and calls for

replication studies (Pedersen and Stritch2018).

Replications are important for checking the validity of

previous studies, and establishing the generalizability

of findings to different populations and contexts

(Klein et al.2014; Pedersen and Stritch2018;

Schmidt2009; Walker, James, and Brewer2017).

Nosek and Lakens(2014) explain that replications:

1. add data to increase precision of the effect

size estimate via meta-analysis, and help to

identify false positive research findings;

2. help to establish generalizability of effects,

i.e., establish whether the sample, setting, and

procedures that are assumed irrelevant in an

experiment, are irrelevant indeed;

3. can help to identify boundary conditions for

effects if they produce negative results.

This article presents the replication of an experimental

research through evaluative conditioning with public

brands. The original research was conducted by

Karens et al.(2016). Evaluative conditioning pertains

to changes in the evaluation of a stimulus (a policy in

our case) as a result of merely pairing it with another

positively or negatively perceived stimulus (the EU

brand in our case) (Martin and Levey 1978; see also

Alon-Barkat and Gilad2017).

Jasper Eshuis

Thijs van de Geest

Erik Hans Klijn

Joris Voets

Magdalena Florek

Bert George

The Effect of the EU-Brand on Citizens’ Trust in Policies:

Replicating an Experiment

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Rabobank

Ghent University

Poznan University of Economics and Business

Erasmus University RotterdamGhent University

Symposium

Article

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 81, Iss. 4, pp. 776–786. © 2021 The

Authors. Public Administration Review

published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf

of American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13367.

Jasper Eshuis is an associate professor at the

Department of Public Administration and Sociology,

Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research focuses

on governance and management of emotions,

public branding, and stakeholder participation. He

has published widely, in journals such as Public

Administration Review, Public Administration and

Public Management Review. He is on the editorial

board of Public Administration Review.

Email: eshuis@essb.eur.nl

Thijs van de Geest is an analyst at the Rabobank.

He obtained his Master degree at the Department

of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus

University Rotterdam. His interest is on the cutting

edge between public administration and business

administration.

Email: thijsvandegeest@gmail.com

Erik Hans Klijn is a professor of public

administration in the Department of Public

Administration and Sociology, Erasmus University

Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His research focuses

on complex decisionmaking in networks, network

management, publicprivate partnerships, branding,

and media influence on governance.

Email: klijn@essb.eur.nl

Joris Voets is an associate professor of public

management in the Department of Public

Governance, Management and Finance at Ghent

University, Belgium. His current research includes

governance and performance of interorganizational

networks and publicprivate partnerships, as well as

service delivery by and government capacity of local

governments. His recent work has been published in

Public Administration, Public Management Review,

and Public Money and Management.

Email: joris.voets@ugent.be

Magdalena Florek is an Associate Professor at

the University of Economics and Business in Pozna,

Poland. She is board member of the International

Place Branding Association and Senior Fellow at

the Institute of Place Management. Magdalena has

consulted and coauthored numerous branding and

promotion strategies for towns, cities and regions in

Poland. She is Member of the Editorial Boards of, i.a.,

Place Branding and Public Diplomacy and Journal of

Destination Marketing and Management.

Email: magdalena.florek@ue.poznan.pl

Bert George is a professor at the Department

of Public Governance and Management at Ghent

University, Belgium. His research focuses on

strategy, behavior, and performance in public

organizations using experimental, observational, and

metaanalytical research methods.

Email: bert.george@ugent.be