Surfacing the Submerged State: Operational Transparency Increases Trust in and Engagement with Government

Problem definition: As trust in government reaches historic lows, frustration with government performance approaches record highs. Academic/practical relevance: We propose that in co-productive settings like government services, peoples’ trust and engagement levels can be enhanced by designing service interactions to allow them to see the often-hidden work—via increasing operational transparency—being performed in response to their engagement. Methodology and results: Across three experimental studies, conducted in the field and lab, we find that surfacing the “submerged state” through operational transparency impacts citizens’ attitudes and behavior. Study 1 leveraged proprietary data from a mobile phone application developed by the City of Boston, Massachusetts, through which residents can submit service requests; the city’s goal was to increase engagement with the app. Users who received photos of government addressing their service requests submitted 60% more requests and in 38% more categories over the ensuing 13 months than users who did not receive such photos. These significant gains in engagement persisted for 11 months following users’ initial exposure to operational transparency and were highest for users who previously had experienced government to be at least moderately responsive to their past requests. In Study 2, residents of Boston who interacted with a website that visualized both service requests (e.g., potholes and broken street lamps) and efforts by the city’s government to address those requests became 14% more trusting and 12% more supportive of government. Moreover, residents who received additional transparency into the growing backlog of service requests that government was failing to fulfill—revealing government to be less responsive—were no more nor less trusting and supportive of government than residents who received no transparency. Study 3 replicated findings from the first two studies, tracing out the mechanisms linking operational transparency and responsiveness to trust and willingness to engage. Operational transparency increases trust and engagement by two causal pathways—through consumers’ increased perceptions of effort by the government and through increased perceptions that engaging with it is impactful. Responsiveness increases feelings of personal efficacy, which boosts willingness to engage both directly and indirectly through the other causal paths. Managerial implications: Taken together, our results suggest that showing more work performed by the organization—via operational transparency—encourages customers to do more work themselves, results with implications for the design of a broad array of co-productive services where operations are hidden and consumer trust and engagement is critical.