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Reducing Compliance Demands in Government Benefit Programs Improves the Psychological Well-Being of Target Group Members

State actions impact the lives of citizens in general and government benefit recipients in particular. However, little is known about whether experiences of psychological costs among benefit recipients can be relieved by reducing compliance demands in interactions with the state. Across three studie...

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Autores principales: Baekgaard, Martin, Sass Mikkelsen, Kim, Krogh Madsen, Jonas, Christensen, Julian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8083216/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muab011
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author Baekgaard, Martin
Sass Mikkelsen, Kim
Krogh Madsen, Jonas
Christensen, Julian
author_facet Baekgaard, Martin
Sass Mikkelsen, Kim
Krogh Madsen, Jonas
Christensen, Julian
author_sort Baekgaard, Martin
collection PubMed
description State actions impact the lives of citizens in general and government benefit recipients in particular. However, little is known about whether experiences of psychological costs among benefit recipients can be relieved by reducing compliance demands in interactions with the state. Across three studies, we provide evidence that reducing demands causes relief. In a survey experiment, we show that psychological costs experienced by Danish unemployment insurance recipients change in response to information about actual reduced compliance demands. In two field studies, we exploit survey data collected around a sudden, exogenous shock (the COVID-19 lockdown of Danish society in March 2020), which led to immediate reductions in compliance demands in Denmark’s active labor market policies. We test whether two groups of benefit recipients experienced reduced psychological costs in response to these sudden reductions in compliance demands imposed by the state. Across all studies, we find that the reduction of compliance demands is associated with an increased sense of autonomy, and in two of the three studies it is associated with reduced stress. Overall, our findings suggest that psychological costs experienced by benefit recipients are indeed affected by state actions in the form of compliance demands.
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spelling pubmed-80832162021-05-03 Reducing Compliance Demands in Government Benefit Programs Improves the Psychological Well-Being of Target Group Members Baekgaard, Martin Sass Mikkelsen, Kim Krogh Madsen, Jonas Christensen, Julian J Public Adm Res Theory Article State actions impact the lives of citizens in general and government benefit recipients in particular. However, little is known about whether experiences of psychological costs among benefit recipients can be relieved by reducing compliance demands in interactions with the state. Across three studies, we provide evidence that reducing demands causes relief. In a survey experiment, we show that psychological costs experienced by Danish unemployment insurance recipients change in response to information about actual reduced compliance demands. In two field studies, we exploit survey data collected around a sudden, exogenous shock (the COVID-19 lockdown of Danish society in March 2020), which led to immediate reductions in compliance demands in Denmark’s active labor market policies. We test whether two groups of benefit recipients experienced reduced psychological costs in response to these sudden reductions in compliance demands imposed by the state. Across all studies, we find that the reduction of compliance demands is associated with an increased sense of autonomy, and in two of the three studies it is associated with reduced stress. Overall, our findings suggest that psychological costs experienced by benefit recipients are indeed affected by state actions in the form of compliance demands. Oxford University Press 2021-04-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8083216/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muab011 Text en © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Public Management Research Association. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) ), which permits non-commercial reproduction and distribution of the work, in any medium, provided the original work is not altered or transformed in any way, and that the work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact journals.permissions@oup.com
spellingShingle Article
Baekgaard, Martin
Sass Mikkelsen, Kim
Krogh Madsen, Jonas
Christensen, Julian
Reducing Compliance Demands in Government Benefit Programs Improves the Psychological Well-Being of Target Group Members
title Reducing Compliance Demands in Government Benefit Programs Improves the Psychological Well-Being of Target Group Members
title_full Reducing Compliance Demands in Government Benefit Programs Improves the Psychological Well-Being of Target Group Members
title_fullStr Reducing Compliance Demands in Government Benefit Programs Improves the Psychological Well-Being of Target Group Members
title_full_unstemmed Reducing Compliance Demands in Government Benefit Programs Improves the Psychological Well-Being of Target Group Members
title_short Reducing Compliance Demands in Government Benefit Programs Improves the Psychological Well-Being of Target Group Members
title_sort reducing compliance demands in government benefit programs improves the psychological well-being of target group members
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8083216/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muab011
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