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

这项研究解决了社会科学中一个长期存在的难题：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，并为日益累退的税收计划提供选举支持？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的因果解释。该解释提出，在评估政府时，公民在做出日常消费决策时所依赖的消费者框架是相同的。换句话说，他们将政府视为另一种消费品。这样的框架在处理政府提供的一些好处方面天生就装备不足。公民们得出结论，政府为他们提供的“交易效用”很低，他们得到的是不公平的待遇。本研究在已有的研究成果的基础上，进一步探讨了交易效用来源于政府、对政府的态度以及对政府规则和规范的遵守之间的关系。特别是，该项目涉及三个实验，一个在现场，两个在互联网上。调查实验评估感知成本和感知收益之间的关系，反对政府。实地实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。这项研究依靠行为经济学、消费者心理学、政治学和社会学的见解来回答一个困扰这些学科学者的问题。在这样做的过程中，研究将制定一个跨学科的课程，以帮助公务员更好地与公民沟通。

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.