The Psychology of Administrative Burden

Descripción del proyecto

Análisis de las cargas administrativas en el acceso a prestaciones sociales

Millones de ciudadanos de todo el mundo tienen que lidiar con cargas administrativas y papeleo al tratar con las burocracias estatales, lo que provoca problemas que van desde el estrés y la estigmatización hasta la falta de acceso a las prestaciones. Sin embargo, se ha investigado muy poco sobre estas cuestiones y los motivos que subyacen tras un fenómeno tan universal. El proyecto POAB, financiado con fondos europeos, se centrará específicamente en estudios exhaustivos sobre los procedimientos para recibir prestaciones sociales, que servirán para explicar los motivos de las cargas, las formas de afrontarlas y la percepción del estigma y el estrés resultantes. El equipo del proyecto utilizará la teoría existente modificada y mediciones innovadoras de registro, fisiológicas y de encuestas, combinadas con métodos experimentales, para analizar la repercusión de las normas existentes en estas cargas.

Objetivo

The burdens of dealing with administrative rules and red tape in government are a fact of life around the world, ranging from small hassles to heavy burdens in the form of stigmatizing processes of proving eligibility and facing potential sanctions. In light of the immense importance of such burdens for millions of people and for the effectiveness of benefit programs, we know surprisingly little about the conditions that give rise to experiences of burden. POAB combines and extends extant theory and uses a unique combination of experimental methods and data to explain how, why, and for whom administrative rules are experienced as burdensome.

POAB studies comprehensive rules regarding unemployment and social benefits and will provide novel register, physiological, and survey measures of welfare benefit recipients’ experiences of burden. I develop and test three theories to explain differences in experiences of burden: 1) How resource scarcity causes cognitive load and hence reduces the ability to cope with rules; 2) How self-efficacy increases the ability to cope with rules; and 3) How perceptions of being undeserving cause stigma and stress.

POAB analyses the causal impact of rules on burden. To this end, I use a unique combination of complementary experimental methods in political science: 1) Cross-national lab experiments with physiological measurement and manipulations of rules, scarcity, efficacy and deservingness perceptions; 2) Cross-national survey experiments to assess different aspects of rules in different contexts; 3) Quasi- and field experiments to assess the impact of rules on register measures of burdens in a real-world context.

POAB offers a fundamentally new interdisciplinary approach by bridging the gap between research on administrative burdens and psychological perspectives. The project’s output will provide profound knowledge of citizens’ experiences of burden and the inequalities in such experiences among recipients of major welfare benefits.