Bad news and quality reputation among users of public services

Abstract

This manuscript examines whether the effect of anchoring bias is greater when citizens evaluate the quality of a public service after receiving negative initial information about service performance than after receiving positive information. It also tests whether there are differences in this anchoring bias by comparing formal (report) vs. informal (rumor) communication. Two field experiments were conducted with the participation of passengers of a commuter public train transportation organization (Experiment 1, N = 105) and users of a public university administrative service (Experiment 2, N = 172). The first experiment confirmed the bias produced by the negative initial information, whereas this bias does not exist for the positive information. The second experiment showed that the bias produced by the initial information has the same magnitude for both formal and informal communication. This paper concludes with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications for managing reputation in public services.