Responding to problems: actions are rewarded, regardless of the outcome
Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
When faced with a problem, policymakers have a choice of action or inaction. Psychological research shows varying results on how individuals evaluate (in)actions conditional on the subsequent outcome. I replicate, generalize, and extend this research into a public management setting with two independent experiments embedded in a nationally representative sample of Danish citizens (n = 2,007). Both experiments show that actions are evaluated more positively than inactions – regardless of the outcome. This finding runs contrary to the inaction (or omission) bias but is consistent with evidence on a “norm of action”, in response to poor performance in political–administrative settings.
Original language | English |
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Journal | Public Management Review |
Volume | 19 |
Issue number | 9 |
Pages (from-to) | 1352-1364 |
Number of pages | 13 |
ISSN | 1471-9037 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2017 |
- Attribution, behavioural public administration, blame avoidance, omission bias
Research areas
ID: 173628360