Earlier research has shown that reducing administrative burdens can have positive effects on the take-up of (social) benefits and services (Bhargava & Manoli 2015; Bell et al. 2023). At the same time, behavioral science, including administrative burden literature, has undergone a heterogeneity revolution in which one-size-fits-all approaches are seen as undesirable and ineffective in the design of interventions (Bryan et al. 2021). This paper applies a user-centered design to reduce administrative burden, tailoring our interventions to a specific target group: women without a paid job and social benefits in the Netherlands. Many women in this group could benefit from local support programs aimed at (re-)integrating job seekers into the workforce. However, their take-up of such support programs is relatively low compared to other target groups. We apply a user-centered approach to identify why this is the case and design tailored interventions that target bottlenecks in reaching groups of women.

Our research question is:

‘To what extent can a user-centered intervention design, aimed at reducing administrative burden, and followed by a field experiment, increase the utilization of services by women without a paid job and social benefits?’

Through interviews (n = 8) and a focus group, we found that users experienced severe information costs in finding services suitable to their situation. Together with a local service provider we designed two types of text-based intervention from which women without a paid job and social benefits could benefit. The first intervention aims to specify the type of help offered, increasing awareness of the service itself. The second intervention targets information about eligibility criteria. The effects of changing these two aspects are tested in an online social media field experiment (cf. Keppeler & Papenfuß 2021). We aim to present the results of this experiment at EGPA 2024.

The emerging study of administrative burden has directed attention to citizen state interactions, as an effort to rebalance public administration to consider experiences of the state other than those of employees. But the experience of employees is clearly critical to understand how policy implementation functions. On the one hand, public employees can impose burdens upon others (e.g., Olsen, Kyhse-Andersen, and Moynihan 2022). On the other hand, their own experience of burdens may matter to policy implementation. Indeed, Burden et al. (2012), which offers the definition of burdens as the experience of policy implementation as onerous, centered on how public employees assessed public policies and reforms through the lens of burdens: as they perceived policies and reforms as introducing more burdens, they grew more opposed to them, and more skeptical of their value to the public.

In this paper, we examine how burdens shape the experience of public employees, focusing on how they perceive the relationship between burdens and their performance. Using a discrete choice experiment with 21,301 public healthcare professionals, we show the relative causal importance of different costs embedded in job procedures for perceived performance. Psychological costs loom larger, with civil servants concerned about loss of autonomy and workplace stress. Learning costs - generated by hard to learn and complex procedures - and compliance costs - due to effortful or time demanding procedures - follow. Heterogeneous effects show that the negative impact of administrative burdens is larger for those under-fifty and for male professionals.

The acquisition of human capital through education is an important path to upward social mobility. However, a significant proportion of any given youth cohort doesn’t make the transition from primary to upper secondary education. The novelty and complexity of the choice of education might be a significant barrier to enrollment—particularly for low SES-students (Christensen et al. 2020). While previous studies have examined how to increase take-up in social programs (e.g. Lasky-Fink and Linos 2023) we know less about how to increase take-up in educational programs. Previous research has shown that educational take-up is related to other barriers in the social policy setting. One explanation is that students systematically underestimate the benefits of further education. This indicates that there might be an untapped potential in using information campaigns to make students update their beliefs about returns to education and in simplifying the decision-making process through visual displays. We argue that simplified, relevant and comparable information about both the short and long-term prospects of education may aid the decision-making process and, in turn, increase take-up of upper secondary education. To examine the effect of providing youth with more information about the benefits of further education on educational take-up and retention we implement a large-scale field experiment among lower secondary school graduates in Denmark (target n=3.000), who are assigned at random to an additional information treatment or to a control group. Having access to education and enrollment data on all Danish students we study whether government information can increase students’ educational take-up.

Christensen, J., Aarøe, L., Baekgaard, M., Herd, P., & Moynihan, D. P. (2020). Human Capital and Administrative Burden: The Role of Cognitive Resources in Citizen-State Interactions. PAR, 80(1), 127–136. https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13134

Lasky-Fink, J., & Linos, E. (2023). Improving Delivery of the Social Safety Net: The Role of Stigma. JPART.

Non-take-up of social welfare poses a significant obstacle to providing financial security for households in vulnerable circumstances, highlighting the need for a thorough understanding to guide effective policies and interventions. Despite its importance, the latest systematic literature review on this topic dates back three decades, emphasizing the need for updated insights, especially from behavioral public administration and economics. The current study entails a scoping review following PRISMA-ScR guidelines to address this gap, analyzing 80 recent studies from developed countries.

The review categorizes determinants of welfare non-participation into four levels: societal, administrative, social, and individual. At the administrative level, the findings indicate that complexity in rules and processes and stringent eligibility criteria tend to reduce non-take-up. Providing personalized eligibility information, particularly with assistance, shows promise in reducing non-take-up. Other behaviorally informed interventions have generally not been effective. Studies at the social level indicate social networks as a potentially effective means to reduce non-participation, though underlying mechanisms require further exploration. At the individual level, robust empirical support exists for administrative burden, lack of general competencies, specific demographics (e.g., migrants), and lack of knowledge as determinants of non-take-up. Conversely, evidence regarding stigma's role is mixed. At the societal level, findings are limited, underscoring the necessity for further investigation.

Our scoping review provides up-to-date insights into current determinants of welfare non-participation. It also emphasizes the need for continued research efforts and targeted policy interventions to combat financial vulnerability effectively.

The intense competition from the private sector makes it challenging for public organizations to attract the next generation of highly educated professionals and especially recent graduates with a business-orientated degree (Keppeler & Papenfuß, 2021; Linos, 2018; Lohr, 2020). Hence, to strengthen public organizations’ competitive advantage on the labor market, some studies advocate for public organizations to focus on prosocial signals and mission impact during the recruitment process (Paarlberg & Lavigna, 2010; Paarlberg & Perry, 2007; Weske et al., 2020), while others suggest mimicking private sector tactics by highlighting career opportunities (Asseburg et al., 2020; Asseburg & Homberg, 2020; De Cooman & Pepermans, 2012; Kim, 2008). Despite the ongoing War for Talent, insights on (a) if and how public organizations use specific content components in their job ads to increase their attractiveness as well as (b) the effectiveness of these content components, are limited. Hence, utilizing a sensegiving-sensemaking perspective (Weick, 1995), this study employs two related studies based on signaling theory (Spence, 1978) and self-efficacy theory (Higgins, 1987). Study 1 uses a content analysis of 409 job ads from private and public organizations in Flanders, Belgium, to assess which content components (i.e., mission impact and/or attention for career and personal growth) public organizations include in job ads and if this sensegiving approach differs from their private-sector counterparts. Study 2 focuses on the sensemaking process of job applicants and conducts a randomized survey-experiment to assess whether emphasizing prosocial mission impact and/or career opportunities in public sector job ads enhances the attractiveness of public organizations. The developed design is tested using data from 314 Gen Z business graduates in Flanders. The results of Study 1 reveal that public and private organizations do not significantly highlight their presumed attributes, while the results of Study 2 indicate that public organizations could increase their employer attractiveness among Gen Z business graduates by emphasizing prosocial mission impact and career opportunities in their job ads.