To Add Insult to Injury: Exploring the Impact of Policy Inequity on Administrative Burden

ABSTRACT

The relationship between inequity and administrative burden constitutes a pivotal concern in the realm of public administration and policy, but how policy inequity (i.e., inequity in policy implementation) influences administrative burden has garnered scant attention. The present study employs data about public assistance programs in China spanning from 2015 to 2017 to examine the consequences of policy inequity on administrative burden. The empirical findings underscore that policy inequity augments psychological and compliance costs while concurrently diminishing citizens' participation in welfare programs, thereby indicating that policy inequity intensifies administrative burden. Notably, individual‐level social capital and contextual‐level information transparency in terms of public exposure related to welfare approval and receipt significantly moderate this relationship. Contrary to our theoretical expectations, social capital and public exposure amplify, rather than dampen, the impact of policy inequity on administrative burden. This study highlights the policy inequity lens and offers important implications for burden reduction.