Administrative Burdens and Public Compliance with Environmental Policies: A Survey Experiment

This study employs a between-subjects survey experiment that randomly assigns participants to eight experimental conditions based on their administrative-burden experiences under different scenarios. It analyzes the effects of administrative burdens—comprising learning costs, psychological costs, and compliance costs—on public compliance with environmental policies. The findings reveal that: (1) In terms of regulatory policies, the presentation of corresponding administrative burdens, such as learning costs and psychological costs, promotes compliance with environmental policies; however, this effect does not extend to compliance costs; (2) When additional administrative burdens are imposed, the positive effects on policy compliance diminish and can even be reversed to have a negative effect; (3) Group regressions based on self-efficacy and descriptive norm variables indicate that when administrative burdens are relatively light, self-efficacy and nudges based on descriptive norms may mitigate the negative impacts of administrative burdens on policy compliance. Conversely, heavier administrative burdens tend to exacerbate the negative impacts on public compliance.

The contributions of this study are as follows: First, it expands the field of research on administrative burdens. Existing studies have predominantly focused on various welfare policies and qualification application procedures. However, as noted by Halling and Baekgaard (2024), administrative-burden experiences may also arise due to other types of interactions with the state. Therefore, to better understand the scope and significance of administrative burdens, it is necessary to conduct research that extends beyond social welfare to examine burdens in areas such as enforcement, taxation, and regulation. To this end, this study broadens the research context to "regulatory" policies, helping to test the external validity of administrative-burden theories. Second, it expands the scope of research on policy compliance. Previous studies have often approached policy compliance from the perspective of nudges, focusing on how various nudging tools affect the motivation for and behavior of public compliance with environmental policies, whereas less attention has been paid to how administrative burdens shape policy compliance from the perspective of state-citizen interactions. Finally, with respect to the research methodology, most existing studies examining administrative burdens through survey experiments have been conducted in Western contexts, particularly in the United States. In contrast, Chinese scholars' research on administrative burdens has largely remained at the theoretical analysis and case-study levels. Therefore, this study employs a survey experiment method to investigate the relationship between administrative burdens and policy compliance, reinforcing the causal link between administrative burdens and policy compliance.