Frontline employees' responses to citizens' communication of administrative burdens

Abstract

The literature on administrative burdens demonstrates that citizens may experience different kinds of administrative burdens when interacting with the state. However, we know little about whether citizens' communication of these experiences affects how frontline employees implement compliance demands. Building on the street-level bureaucracy and administrative burden literature, we hypothesize that citizens' communication of direct and indirect psychological costs affects frontline employees' inclination to accommodate citizens. Furthermore, we expect this effect to be stronger for members of the ethnic majority than for ethnic minority members. We test these expectations using a preregistered survey experiment on a sample of 1048 Danish public caseworkers from 32 employment agencies. Results show that frontline employees are indeed more willing to reduce demands and help citizens that communicate their experiences of direct and indirect psychological costs. Further, we find some evidence that frontline employees are more responsive to citizens from the ethnic majority.