公众友好型政府信息公开:理论构建与实证检验

Public-oriented Government-information Disclosures:A Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Examination

目前政府信息公开的实践和研究对于解决政府与公众之间信息不对称的根本问题存在不同程度的忽视,体现在主要关注信息是否被政府公开,而对信息能否被公众有效接收关注有限。本文提出了公众友好型政府信息公开这一研究视角,其核心特征为可使公众易于识别和理解目标信息且信息加工体验积极,建构了公众友好型政府信息公开影响公众评价的理论框架,以新冠疫情政府信息公开为例进行了分析和实证检验,提供了公众友好型政府信息公开积极影响公众评价政府信息公开(如满意度)、政府(如信任)以及其他政府行为(如控制疫情的信心)的初步证据。

Government-information disclosures aim to resolve government-public information asymmetries.Although a great deal of attention is paid to whether governments disclose information,much less attention is devoted to how well such disclosed information is received by the public.When the public cannot easily find the information,they need or cannot understand the information,the disclosures fail to resolve the information asymmetries and thus lead to ineffective government transparency.The present research offers a new perspective to study government-information disclosures,namely,public-oriented government-information disclosures.This perspective emphasizes the importance of the citizensreception and understanding of the information disclosed by the government.Such government-information disclosures make information easily identifiable and understandable for the public and ensure a positive information-processing experience.It is proposed that public-oriented government-information disclosures can positively influence citizensevaluation of government performance on three levels,namely,citizensevaluation of government information disclosure,citizensjudgment of government,and citizensevaluation of other government actions.We examine this theoretical model by looking at the Chinese governments information disclosures during the COVID-19 pandemic,when there were traditional government-information disclosures that only focused on the information disclosures as well as public-oriented government-information disclosures that paid attention to the public reception of the disclosed information.It is proposed that in comparison to traditional government-information disclosures,public-oriented government-information disclosures both increased public satisfaction and willingness to repost the disclosed information and reduced the likelihood that the public would blame the various local governments for inadequate communications about the pandemic.Such disclosures increased public trust in government.Lastly,they increased public confidence in pandemic control and willingness to voluntarily comply with the government pandemic measures.Three survey experiments with within-subject designs,based on three types of public-oriented government-information disclosures and one traditional government-information disclosure,examine these hypotheses.In each experiment,a traditional government-information disclosure is paired with one type of public-oriented government-information disclosure.The participantsperceptions are measured by eleven dependent variables derived from the hypotheses to capture the expected effects.The hypotheses are supported across all three experiments.These findings provide empirical evidence supporting our theoretical model about public-oriented government-information disclosures.Thereafter,practical and research implications are discussed.