跨越公共服务数字化与公民使用的鸿沟:以工伤保险为例

Farewell to Myth:Digitization of Employment Injury Insurance Services and Citizen Utilization

长期以来,学术界普遍对数字化实际推动公民接受公共服务的效果持悲观看法,认为这只是一种“神话”或“乌托邦”。本文以工伤保险公共服务为例,通过连续双重差分法进行准实验设计和反事实评估,发现基于中国场景得出的结论是乐观的:公共服务数字化对于工伤保险覆盖面提升的解释力度显著(高达182%)。本文进一步地通过合成双重差分等方法发现,对于公民需求的重视是公民接受公共服务的决定性因素,公共服务数字化在其中更多起到了“助推器”、“催化剂”及“加速器”的作用。本文呼吁建设以公民需求为中心的数字政府并推动“互联网+公共服务”,在先进技术的引用及推广之外,更加重视公共价值的践行。

It has been widely acknowledged within the academic community that the efficacy of citizen acceptance of digitized public services has proven to be suboptimal and even disillusioning.For instance,Ma and Zheng(2018)conducted an empirical study on thirty-two European countries and discovered that citizens did not frequently utilize bettermaintained government websites and,instead,they continued to rely on traditional methods and“still queued up to stay away from e-services.”The acceptance,adoption,and usage of e-government or digital government services by citizens are still considered elusive goals or myths(Bekkers and Homburg,2007).Undoubtedly,technology has significantly contributed to driving a governmental transformation over time(Dunleavy et al.,2006).Nevertheless,it is imperative to consider the governance structure as well as the socio-economic context within which technological advancements occur.The oversimplified assumption that"expensive and resource-intensive digital services will inherently result in widespread acceptance and utilization by citizens requires careful consideration(Meijer and Bolivar,2016;van den Berg et al.,2020).The criticality of reflecting on citizens’adoption and utilization of digital public services cannot be overstated in order to achieve citizen-centric digital services(Barbosa et al.,2013).This study aims to address this issue.In this paper,we present a theoretical analysis to determine the likelihood of citizen adoption and usage of a specific digital public service.With regards to costs,our primary focus is on the administrative burdens.In terms of benefits,in addition to tangible advantages such as increased monetary subsidies,we also emphasize intangible benefits such as enhancing citizens’trust and combating corruption.Subsequently,we illustrate the case of participation in industrial injury insurance with representative significance and we construct a continuous difference-in-differences(DID)framework for a counterfactual assessment.Our findings reveal that digital public services account for approximately 182%of the expansion in industrial injury insurance coverage,primarily driven by provinces with higher proportions of educated individuals and higher GDP.However,when we advance the treatment year-by-year under conditions whereby digital public services are absent but overall policy trends remain unchanged,this effect becomes statistically insignificant.Consequently,we interpret digital public services as“boosters,”“catalysts,”or“accelerators”rather than as playing decisive roles.We employ the Synthetic DID Method to validate our results further,and we obtain robust outcomes.In contrast to prevailing pessimistic literature on this topic,our study provides optimistic evidence regarding the impact of digital public services.However,we contend that this evidence is not solely due to digital public services.Rather,it emanates from an approach centered on citizens’needs and informed policy orientations.