Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: The Consumer Logic of Anti-Government Antagonism

这项研究解决了一个贯穿社会科学的谜题：如何解释美国人对政府的反对？也就是说，为什么美国人对再分配计划的支持率相对较低，对政府的信任度下降，并在选举中支持递减性越来越强的税收计划？这些项目测试了一种基于行为经济学和社会心理学的新颖因果解释。这种解释提出，在评估政府时，公民会引入他们在做出日常消费决策时所依赖的相同的消费者框架。换句话说，他们把政府当作另一种消费品。这样一个框架在应对政府提供的一些好处方面，本质上是不完善的。公民得出的结论是，政府提供给他们的“交易效用”很低——他们得到了不公平的待遇。本研究在初步研究结果的基础上，进一步探讨了政府产生的交易效用、对政府的态度以及遵守政府规则和规范之间的关系。特别的是，这些项目包括三个实验，一个在野外，两个在互联网上。调查实验评估了感知成本和感知收益之间的关系，以及对政府的反对。实地试验测试了感知成本和收益与遵守政府规则和规范之间的关系。这项研究依赖于行为经济学、消费者心理学、政治学和社会学的见解，以回答一个困扰着这些学科的学者的问题。因此，该研究将制定一个跨学科的课程，以帮助公务员更好地与市民沟通。

This research addresses a persistent puzzle across the social sciences: What explains Americans' opposition to government? That is to say, why do Americans evince comparatively low support for redistributive programs, register decreasing trust in government, and offer electoral support to increasingly regressive tax schemes? The projects tests a novel causal explanation, grounded in behavioral economics and social psychology. The explanation proposes that, when evaluating government, citizens import the same consumer frameworks they rely on when making everyday consumer decisions. In other words, they treat government as just another consumer good. Such a framework is inherently ill-equipped to grapple with some of the benefits that government provides. Citizens conclude that government is providing them low "transaction utility" -- that they are getting a raw deal. The research expands on preliminary results to investigate the relationships among transaction utility as it is derived from government, attitudes toward government, and compliance with government rules and norms. Specially, the projects involves three experiments, one in the field and two over the Internet. The survey experiments evaluate the relationship between perceived costs and perceived benefits, and opposition to government. The field experiment tests the relationship between perceived costs and benefits and compliance with government rules and norms. The research relies on insights from behavioral economics, consumer psychology, political science and sociology to answer a question that has bedeviled scholars from across those disciplines. In so doing, the research will chart an interdisciplinary course to help public servants better communicate with citizens.