2026-10-13T16:05:45Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33965617 2026-09-22T14:56:01Z category_27634 item_type_2 month_year_09_2026

The Effects of Program Information on Citizens’ Reputational Beliefs about Government and Health Insurance Enrollment: Evidence from a Field Experiment Qun Wang (25090547) Public administration Program information Reputational beliefs Health insurance enrollment Field experiment <p dir="ltr">This study examines how informational nudges shape citizen participation in a government-embedded complementary health insurance program and whether changes in perceived organizational reputation help explain these effects. It proposes a framework in which message-based informational nudges influence participation by making program-related information more salient, easier to process, and normatively meaningful, while also activating organization-directed evaluation. The framework is tested during the transition from municipally to provincially coordinated Huimin Insurance in City A, Liaoning Province, China, a setting marked by institutional uncertainty and ambiguous reputational signals. A field experiment randomly assigned communities to a treatment group, which received a bundled informational intervention package, or to a control group, which received no intervention. Difference-in-Differences and causal mediation analyses show that informational nudges increased program-related knowledge, willingness to participate, and actual participation. Changes in perceived organizational reputation helped explain the effects on knowledge and willingness more robustly than on actual participation. The study contributes to scholarship on informational nudges by showing that message-based nudges in public programs may operate through an evaluative pathway alongside their informational effects, and to organizational reputation research by clarifying how a focused citizen-side evaluation can function as an explanatory mechanism in participation decisions.</p> 2026-09-22T14:56:01Z Dataset Media 10.6084/m9.figshare.33965617.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/media/The_Effects_of_Program_Information_on_Citizens_Reputational_Beliefs_about_Government_and_Health_Insurance_Enrollment_Evidence_from_a_Field_Experiment/33965617 CC BY 4.0