Effectiveness, efficiency and equity tradeoffs in public programs: a citizen experiment

Meier, Kenneth J ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6378-0855, Davis, Jourdan and Xu, Xiaoyang 2023. Effectiveness, efficiency and equity tradeoffs in public programs: a citizen experiment. Public Administration Review 83 (6) , pp. 1462-1477. 10.1111/puar.13690

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Abstract

Debates over public programs frequently focus on questions of effectiveness, equity, and efficiency and the tradeoff among these objectives. Missing from the literature is whether the general public cares about these tradeoffs, can perceive such differences, and will act on them. This article reports on two pre-registered vignette experiments where the effectiveness, equity, and efficiency are assessed relative to experimental treatments focused on U.S. K-12 education involving test scores, equality of test scores, and program costs. One experiment focuses on equity in race and the other on equity in income. The experiments show that the general public perceives differences in program effectiveness and equity, values both, and is unwilling to tradeoff one for the other. The public cares about program costs, but it lacks a sophisticated understanding of efficiency as a concept. Inequalities in income appear to influence equity concerns more than those involving race.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	1540-6210
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	21 June 2023
Date of Acceptance:	20 June 2023
Last Modified:	19 Dec 2023 13:46
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/160491

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