Can Transparency Foster More Understanding and Compliant Citizens?
Abstract
Voluntary policy compliance is an important yet rarely studied topic in public administration. To address the paucity of research, this article proposes and empirically tests a conceptual framework that ties policy transparency and policy understanding to voluntary policy compliance intentions. The reasoning is that the extent to which citizens understand a policy contributes to their intentions to comply with that policy. Further, the authors argue that policy transparency indirectly influences voluntary policy compliance intentions through a positive effect on citizens’ levels of policy understanding. To enhance the validity of the findings, the authors assess these relationships across two policy domains. The findings reflect an indirect positive effect of transparency on voluntary compliance occurring through policy understanding. However, this emerged only for one policy domain. These results suggest that the effects of policy transparency on policy understanding and voluntary policy compliance intentions may depend on the policy domain.
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Transparency's effects on trust appear contingent on policy domain, prior attitudes, and presentation format.
“Effects appear to be contingent on policy domain (de Fine Licht, 2014), prior attitudes (Grimmelikhuijsen & Meijer, 2014), and even presentation format (Porumbescu et al., 2017).”
From Latent transparency and trust in government: Unexpected findings from two survey experiments (2020) · cites this paper as Porumbescu et al., 2017
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Latent transparency and trust in government: Unexpected findings from two survey experiments
Grimmelikhuijsen, S. G., Piotrowski, S. J., & Van Ryzin, G. G. (2020) · Government Information Quarterly · doi:10.1016/j.giq.2020.101497 · Cited by 81 · see citing works
The effects of police performance on agency trustworthiness and citizen participation
Porumbescu, G. A., Neshkova, M. I., & Huntoon, M. (2019) · Public Management Review · doi:10.1080/14719037.2018.1473473 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
- Authors
- Porumbescu, G. A., Lindeman, M. I. H., Ceka, E., & Cucciniello, M.
- Affiliations
- Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US)
- Northern Illinois University (US)
- Bocconi University (IT)
- Venue
- Public Administration Review
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2017-07-09
- Volume
- 77
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 840-850
- ISSN
- 0033-3352 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-6210
- OpenAlex
- W2729182503
- Cited by
- 88
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 12 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 9.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Public Administration Review (publishedVersion)
- Archivio istituzionale della Ricerca - Bocconi (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Research Foundation of Korea
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Public Administration › Public Policy and Administration Research
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Regulation and Compliance Studies
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Taxation and Compliance Studies
- Keywords
- policy transparency, policy understanding, compliance intention, citizen compliance
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