Beyond specific case responses: Accountability,public service motivation,and bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness

Abstract

Policy responsiveness requires changing public policies to follow public opinion, but previous macro-level studies generally focus on the role of politicians and fail to touch on substantive policy regulations, whereas micro-level studies are limited to bureaucrats’ case-by-case responses. This study extends the connotation of policy responsiveness to local individual executive bureaucrats and develop the concept of bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness, which denotes government bureaucrats’ intention to modify policies in response to public opinion. We develop a framework integrating external interventions and intrinsic motivations to analyse how accountability and public service motivation (PSM) jointly shape bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. Based on a survey experiment conducted among Master of Public Administration (MPA) students in China, the results show that strategic accountability rather than functional accountability has a significantly positive effect on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. Bureaucrats with high PSM express high policy responsiveness intentions, and accountability does not significantly crowd out the role of PSM. These conclusions emphasise the role of bureaucrats in policy responsiveness and link it to accountability and motivation.

Keywords

Bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness strategic accountability functional accountability public service motivation

Introduction

Government responsiveness to public opinion is crucial for achieving good governance and governments need to respond to citizens’ demand effectively (Chen, 2023; LaCombe, 2023). As one typical kind of responsiveness, policy responsiveness is most important because it targets on changes of policy agendas in response to citizens’ voice (Powell, 2004; Roberts and Kim, 2011; Wlezien, 2017). Previous studies argue that elected politicians have strong policy responsiveness and tend to follow citizens’ preferences to adjust policies in order to get their support (Kang and Powell, 2010; Powell, 2004). Meanwhile, it is usually considered that bureaucrats as policy implementors just adopt specific case responses and do not engage in policy changes through answering citizen’s questions and complaints on online platforms (Chen et al., 2016; Su and Meng, 2016). The divide between these two branches of studies leads to the following interesting questions: Do bureaucrats engage in policy responsiveness? If yes, what drives bureaucrats to engage in policy responsiveness?

Two clusters of predictors are related to policy responsiveness in previous studies. The first cluster argues that policy responsiveness is shaped by political institutional factors, such as government ideology (Lupu and Tirado Castro, 2023), legislative professionalization (Lax and Phillips, 2012), federalism (Wlezien and Soroka, 2012), checks and balances (LaCombe, 2023), and direct democracy (Caughey and Warshaw, 2018). The other cluster of studies argue that policy responsiveness is related to social-economic characteristics, such as the wealth status (Schakel, 2021), unemployment (Chen, 2023), and issue salience (Lax and Phillips, 2012). However, these studies have two drawbacks. First, critics argue that these studies mainly adopt a macro-level perspective by using issue percentages and budgets as proxy variables and fail to touch on specific or substantive policy regulations (Kang and Powell, 2010; Kornreich, 2019; Lax and Phillips, 2012). Second, these studies mainly concentrate on the country or region levels rather than the individual level. Thus, they ignore the effects of official-level management institutions and officials’ individual attributes.

In this study, we first propose the concept of bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness and define it as “government bureaucrats’ intention to modify policy regulations in response to public opinion”. Then, we develop a framework integrating external interventions and intrinsic motivations to explain bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. By treating accountability as an external intervention and public service motivation (PSM) as intrinsic motivation, we implement a randomised survey experiment to examine their effects on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness under different scenarios. On the one hand, we distinguish two types of accountability, namely strategic accountability and functional accountability, and finds that strategic accountability can better stimulate bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness than functional accountability. Besides, we also find that higher level of PSM is positively related to bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness, and both types of accountability do not significantly crowd out the role of PSM.

The results make the following contributions. First, we develop the concept of bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness, which extends the connotation of policy responsiveness from politicians to executive bureaucrats. It emphasises bureaucrats’ similar case rather than specific case responses, and inspires bureaucrats should also consider policy changes in response to citizens’ demand. Second, we also construct a comprehensive framework, integrating external interventions and intrinsic motivations, to explain drivers of bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. This framework helps us better understand the policy responsiveness behaviours of bureaucrats, who lie between high-ranking officials and the local citizens according to the “sandwich model” (Liu et al., 2024b; Meng and Su, 2021). Third, this study makes a typological contribution by proposing a novel accountability typology framework and enriches empirical evidence in non-Western contexts through experimental methods. Existing typologies of accountability predominantly adopt a forum perspective (Pérez-Durán, 2024; Romzek, 2000), with limited scholarly attention devoted to content-based categorisation of accountability mechanisms. The functional versus strategic accountability distinction we proposed underscores the importance of accountability content design, particularly the precise delineation of desired bureaucratic actions and compliance outcomes.

Theoretical framework and hypotheses

Theoretical framework

The concept of bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness

Along with the widespread use of digital platforms, the micro-level responsiveness studies focus on executive bureaucrats who take on more responsibilities to respond to citizens’ requests through hotlines and online message boards rather than politicians (Li et al., 2019; Meng and Su, 2021). Recently, a growing body of experimental research also adds causal evidence for the dynamic of responsiveness (Chen et al., 2016; Poole, 2019). However, executive bureaucrats’ responsiveness in current studies just focus on answering citizen’s questions and solving their complaints. That is, most of these bureaucrat-level studies, including those using experimental designs, are limited to bureaucrats’ responses to single opinions and specific requests. Actually, bureaucrats’ responses to citizens’ specific requests are only a precondition or a minimal form of responsiveness (Su and Meng, 2016). This branch of responsiveness research deviates from policy changes, which is the focus of policy responsiveness.

In practice, executive bureaucrats are not just policy implementers and they also engage in policy responsiveness or policy changes. Innovation research has revealed that front-line staff and middle managers also usually figure as initiators of policy innovations (Borins, 2001). In this case, we endeavor to extend the connotation of policy responsiveness to executive bureaucrats and uncover the policy responsiveness behaviours of bureaucratic managers. We define bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness as “government bureaucrats’ intention to modify policy regulations in response to public opinion”. In other words, bureaucrats intentionally pursue similar case responses that go beyond addressing and responding to individual public comments (or complaints and requests) to further reflect on their policy implications, which then contributes to policy revision and optimisation. This definition extends bureaucrat-level specific case responses to observe whether bureaucrats successfully make policy adjustments after catching the “signal” of a single citizen’s opinion that reflects broader social issues or conflicts. Of course, bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness does not mean that the bureaucrats must revise policies in response to each piece of citizen’s opinion. Nevertheless, bureaucrats should always maintain the intentions to improve existing policies in response to public opinion (i.e., policy responsiveness intentions).

A framework integrating external interventions and intrinsic motivations

There has been a large literature exploring the interplay between external interventions and intrinsic motivations in shaping bureaucratic intentions and behaviours (Schillemans and Aleksovska, 2024; Tu, 2024). External interventions, encompassing command systems and rule-based incentive structures (e.g., rewards and punishments), have been extensively employed to regulate public sector employees’ conduct and enhance performance (Mikkelsen et al., 2015). Such mechanisms aim to minimise performance distortions through strict rule compliance and monitoring (Choi, 2023), which are reinforced by New Public Management reforms (Tu, 2024). Intrinsic motivation, defined as the propensity to undertake actions without external inducements due to either innate or learned preferences (Deci, 1971), serves a fundamental explanatory factor of human behaviours (Schillemans and Aleksovska, 2024). However, scholarship warns of the potential crowding-out effect wherein external interventions may suppress intrinsic motivations - a core tenet of the motivation crowding theory.

The motivation crowding theory assumes that external interventions crowd out intrinsic motivations when perceived as controlling by affected individuals (Frey and Jegen, 2001; Kroll and Porumbescu, 2019). When external interventions are imposed on individuals, they also undermine intrinsic motivations by diminishing one’s sense of self-determination and self-esteem (Park and Word, 2012; Ryan and Deci, 2002). While the theoretical mechanisms of this crowding-out effect are well-established, empirical evidence yields mixed results. Some studies confirm the existence of the crowding-out effects (Jacobsen and Jensen, 2017; Ki, 2022; Mikkelsen et al., 2015), some find that the crowding-out effect is not significant (Kim and Bak, 2020), and others even identify complementary effects between performance-related pay and intrinsic motivation (Stazyk, 2012). Notably, existing literature has not examined this phenomenon within bureaucratic policy responsiveness contexts.

Our analytical framework integrates external interventions (operationalised as accountability mechanisms) and intrinsic motivations (operationalised as PSM) to explain executive bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness intentions. Accountability systems function as institutional controls shaping bureaucrats’ behaviours and expectations through a reward-punishment calculus framework (Maggetti and Papadopoulos, 2023; Tu and Gong, 2022), where rational actors strategically optimise their responses to external incentives (Schillemans and Aleksovska, 2024). Conversely, PSM is generally considered as a kind of intrinsic motivation (Corduneanu et al., 2020; Jacobsen et al., 2014). The PSM theory maintains that a strong commitment to the public interest serves as a fundamental driver of bureaucrats’ efforts (Wittels, 2023). Scholars have also confirmed significant effects of PSM on collaborative behaviours (Esteve et al., 2015), extra-role behaviours (Caillier, 2015), and ethical behaviours (Meyer-Sahling et al., 2019). This dual theoretical lens facilitates novel investigation of how formal accountability pressures and public service motivation jointly shape bureaucrats’ willingness to incorporate citizens’ opinions into policy adaptation.

Hypotheses

Accountability mechanisms are vital tools for governments to achieve their intended goals (Han, 2020; Schillemans, 2016). Accountability is generally defined as “a relationship that involves one individual or agency being held to answer for performance expected by some significant ‘other’” (Romzek and Dubnick, 2000: 382). Actors are obliged to explain and justify their actions to a responsible forum or some authority (Bovens, 2007; Romzek and Dubnick, 1987). Dominant accountability typologies differentiate between hierarchical, legal, political, and professional forms (Romzek, 2000), or alternatively vertical, horizontal, hybrid, and social dimensions (Pérez-Durán, 2024) - classifications grounded in the accountability forum perspective (emphasizing “accountable to whom?”). We draw on the literature to propose a content-based accountability typology by distinguishing functional and strategic accountability (Ebrahim, 2003; Najam, 1996; Pilon and Brouard, 2022). Functional accountability is technical in nature and refers to accounting for short-term objectives and task-specific deliverables (Ebrahim, 2003; Pilon and Brouard, 2022), whereas strategic accountability is value-driven and focuses on long-term objectives and structural impacts within the broader environment (Ebrahim, 2003; Pilon and Brouard, 2022). The accountability content perspective – focused on “accountable for what?”-reveals how institutional design must precisely specify desired bureaucratic actions and attached consequences.

In the context of government responses, functional accountability refers to the specification of technical standards for each governmental response to public opinions, which usually include timeliness and immediate quality. In contrast, strategic accountability explores similar case responses to a batch of opinions and pursues the long-term effects with a focus on exploring institutionalised policy solutions. Some Chinese local governments have released guidelines that include strategic accountability for handling online messages from the public.¹ For example, strategic accountability-related expressions in these official documents include, “strengthening the tracking and supervision of the progress in processing and regularly carrying out a retrospective survey of the processing results” and “carefully studying the new situation of the increasing number of online demands of the masses, adjusting the working ideas and gradually establishing a long-term working mechanism.”

Bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness emphasises institutionalising solutions that align with strategic goals of governance, ensuring long-term effectiveness. The impacts of accountability on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness are established in close supervision (Kim and Lee, 2010), imposing expectations (Brandsma and Schillemans, 2013), incentives (Han, 2020), and internal control (Choi and Chun, 2021). Therefore, strategic accountability’s prescriptions for pursuing solutions will force bureaucrats to try to perceive the first signs of broad social problems through citizens’ opinions and gain insights for policy changes. In this way, they can improve their long-term performance through institutionalised policy revisions. Thus, strategic accountability demonstrates significant potential to enhance bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. Meanwhile, functional accountability is tested under a similar hypothesis as a placebo.

H1: Accountability has a significantly positive effect on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness.

H1a: Functional accountability has a significantly positive effect on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness.

H1b: Strategical accountability has a significantly positive effect on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness.

PSM can be defined as “a particular form of altruism or prosocial motivation that is animated by specific dispositions and values arising from public institutions and missions” (Perry et al., 2010: 682). PSM consists of attraction to public policymaking, commitment to public interest, compassion, and self-sacrifice (Kim and Vandenabeele, 2010; Perry, 1996). At the heart of the PSM construct is the idea that individuals are oriented to serve public interests and perform meaningful social service (Kim and Vandenabeele, 2010; Liu and Tang, 2011; Perry et al., 2010). In addition, bureaucrats with high PSM also pay close attention to public policymaking behaviour (Perry and Wise, 1990). If the actions of bureaucrats align with the public interest, PSM will drive them to exert more efforts (Wittels, 2023). Bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness emphasises the achievement of long-term solutions to social problems through public policy adjustments and improvements. Thus, we argue that bureaucrats with high PSM are more concerned about achieving the public interest in the long term than bureaucrats with low PSM. Hence, we propose the following hypothesis:

H2: PSM has a significantly positive effect on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness; that is, bureaucrats with high PSM have significantly strong policy responsiveness intentions.

The motivation crowding theory posits that if external interventions are perceived as controlling, they can undermine the bureaucrats’ sense of self-determination and self-esteem, thereby crowding out their intrinsic motivation (Jacobsen et al., 2014; Wenzel et al., 2019). Accountability encompasses formal oversight and control mechanisms designed to ensure compliance and performance (Bovens, 2007; Xiao and Zhu, 2022), whereas PSM is a typical kind of intrinsic motivation (Corduneanu et al., 2020; Jacobsen et al., 2014). Thus, higher accountability is not necessarily beneficial because it may create a negative psychology among bureaucrats and offset some of the positive effects of PSM. Actually, empirical evidence has suggested that excessive accountability can crowd out bureaucrats’ intrinsic motivation to serve the public (Tu and Gong, 2022). Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:

H3: Accountability negatively moderates the relationship between PSM and bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness.

H3a: Functional accountability negatively moderates the relationship between PSM and bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness.

H3b: Strategic accountability negatively moderates the relationship between PSM and bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness.

Research design

Research context

The online petition platforms develop rapidly in China in recent years (Liu et al., 2023; Zhang and Bai, 2024), which provides an opportunity to explore bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness to public opinion. In this study, we take Message Board for Leaders (MBL) as an example to demonstrate the general process of local government responses to public opinion (see Figure 1). MBL, initiated by the official media outlet People’s Daily Online, is the largest official online petition platform in China (Zhang and Bai, 2024). The public can use MBL to express their opinions and interact with their local government leaders. There are two types of agencies that are responsible for responding and addressing to public opinion: response agencies, which are responsible for receiving, distributing, and responding to public opinions by using MBL, and specialised agencies, which are responsible for addressing public opinions in specific areas, such as the Education Bureau and the Environmental Protection Bureau. Local government leaders and superior agencies guide and supervise these response and specialised agencies in handling and responding to public opinions.

In Figure 1, a double-dashed line divides the response process into two parts. The left-hand side concerns local governments’ processing and responses to individual public comment, which is the individual-level specific case responsiveness often measured by response rates and speed in earlier studies. The right-hand side defines bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness, in which response agencies and specialised agencies process and respond to public comments on behalf of the government while deriving some of their implications, recommendations, primers, and catalysts for improving existing policies, which then influence actual policy revisions. In other words, the bureaucrats in these two agencies may summarise pressing problems and significant demands for responsive policy design by analyzing plenty of public opinions. Bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness is a continuation of individual-level specific case responsiveness and is still based on the individual behaviour of bureaucrats. In terms of consequences, however, bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness is focused on the aggregate and long-term effects of policy adjustments.

We collected some concrete examples from privately published reports on MBL by local governments in China to explain their bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. For example, one case is “after the petition of illegal decoration in a district was completed, the district party office conducted a comprehensive analysis and put forward specific comments submitted to the local leaders … introduced The Document for Joint Supervision and Comprehensive Management of Illegal Construction and Illegal Decoration in Residential Districts.”² The MBL’s public website includes some examples of bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness: “In response to your proposal to ban training courses in residential buildings, the Municipal Bureau of Ecology and Environment will propose corresponding changes to the Standing Committee of the Municipal People’s Congress when revising The Environmental Noise Management Regulations.”³

Experiment design

We designed two scenarios for a randomised survey experiment to conduct our empirical tests, which were registered with the Open Science Framework Registries. In these two scenarios, the respondents played two different fictitious characters who were the respective heads of the response and specialised agencies in the process of local government responses (see Vignettes 1 and 2). As delineated in Figure 1, these two agencies serve distinct yet complementary roles in directly managing public opinions on behalf of local governments. The inclusion of these two main characters in the experiment not only provides a more comprehensive picture of the government response process, but it also allows for a more robust conclusion by corroborating the data analysis results in these two contexts. Moreover, we used environmental pollution as the issue of public opinion in both vignettes because the respondents would be familiar with this widely discussed public issue in China. Correspondingly, the concept of a response agency is concretised by the term ‘a city’s online message response agency,' and the term ‘a city’s environmental protection department' serves to embody the specialised agency. The two specific environmental issues in the vignettes are the dust and noise pollution due to construction sites. Among the various environmental opinions raised by the public, dust and noise pollution are the most prevalent.

Vignette 1

Suppose you are the head of a city’s online message response agency. [Experimental cue.] Today, you received a message from a netizen to the secretary of the municipal party committee of this city, saying that a construction site around his home district is often under construction at night recently, which not only makes the environment very dusty but also noisy.

Vignette 2

Suppose you are the head of a city’s environmental protection department. [Experimental cue.] Today, you received a message from a netizen to the secretary of the municipal party committee of this city, saying that a construction site around his home district is often under construction at night recently, which not only makes the environment very dusty but also noisy.

We embedded three experimental cues in the context of each vignette while keeping all other expressions unchanged (see Table 1). In the setting of experimental cues, the control group did not receive a cue, whereas functional and strategic accountability is used as cues in the other two groups, respectively. Among them, the operationalization of functional accountability is mainly the higher authorities’ requirement for the response and specialised agencies to manage the high quality of their responses to netizens’ messages. This kind of regulation mainly examines the immediate results from processing each message. The operationalization of strategic accountability is that the higher authorities require the response and specialised agencies to be able to explore similar case responses and design long-term mechanisms to address each type of problem based on each citizen’s opinion. The operational design of these functional and strategic accountability relies on the corresponding expressions in official documents.

Table 1.

Experimental cues in three experimental groups.

Groups	Experimental cues
Group 1: Baseline	None
Group 2: Functional accountability	The city released its Guidelines for the Mission of Handling Online Public Messages at the beginning of the year, which require providing high-quality responses to netizens' messages, holding accountable any personnel who cause netizens’ dissatisfaction, and incorporating relevant results into their performance evaluation scores
Group 3: Strategic accountability	The city released its Guidelines for the Mission of Handling Online Public Messages at the beginning of the year, which require solving one matter to drive the resolution of a class of problems, exploring long-term solutions for problems, and tracking the accountability of personnel responsible for processing and responding to netizens’ messages based on long-term results

Measures

The bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness is operationalised through the revision of policy regulations in accordance with public opinion. The policy regulations referred to here are the Night Construction Management Regulation, which corresponds to the fictitious issues of construction dust and noise within the experimental scenario. We set two questions after Vignettes 1 and 2, respectively. The statements were set according to the characters in Vignettes 1 and 2, whereas two dissimilar statements for each vignette corresponded to the dust and noise pollutants (see Table 2). For each question, the respondents were asked to judge how consistent these statements were with their practice, including five different options: completely not consistent, not consistent, neutral, consistent, and completely consistent. If the respondents felt that the more the statements were consistent with their own ideas, the stronger their intention to revise the corresponding policy regulations based on the citizens’ opinions, that is, the stronger policy responsiveness.

Table 2.

Statements measuring bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness.

Vignettes	Issue cases	Statements
Vignette 1: Response agency	Dust pollution	Require the environmental protection department to improve its review standards regarding dust emissions during night construction by revising the Night Construction Management Regulation. (Completely not consistent 1 —— 5 completely consistent)
Vignette 1: Response agency	Noise pollution	Require the environmental protection department to improve its review standards regarding noise emissions during night construction by revising the Night Construction Management Regulation. (Completely not consistent 1 —— 5 completely consistent)
Vignette 2: Specialised agency	Dust pollution	Revise the Night Construction Management Regulation to improve its review standards regarding dust emissions during night construction. (Completely not consistent 1 —— 5 completely consistent)
Vignette 2: Specialised agency	Noise pollution	Revise the Night Construction Management Regulation to improve its review standards regarding noise emissions during night construction. (Completely not consistent 1 —— 5 completely consistent)

We measured the respondents’ PSM using a classic five-item scale (Wright et al., 2013) (see Table 3). We also asked the respondents about their different demographic characteristics. On the one hand, we controlled for individual characteristics, including gender, cohort, party affiliation, and tenure. Gender was defined as a dummy variable based on whether the respondents were women or men (female = 0, male = 1). Cohort was defined as an interval measure for one’s year of birth (1 = born in or after 1996, 2 = born between 1991 and 1995 … 6 = born before or in 1975). Party means that the participant is a member of the Communist Party or others (Communist Party member = 1, others = 0). Tenure refers to the years working in their vocation. On the other hand, we used environmental protection as a focal issue; therefore, we also controlled for the respondents’ environmental concerns as a variable, Concern, which was measured by the following question: “In general, how much are you concerned about environmental issues?” The respondents’ concern was measured on a 5-point Likert scale from 1 (completely not concerned) to 5 (completely concerned). Among the control variables, Gender and Party were treated as categorical variables, whereas Cohort, Tenure, and Concern were treated as continuous variables. We measured the respondents’ PSM and all control variables before the experimental context to avoid the potential influence of the experimental context.

Table 3.

Measurement items of PSM.

	Items
1	Meaningful public service is very important to me
2	I am often reminded by daily events about how dependent we are on one another
3	Making a difference in society means more to me than personal achievements
4	I am prepared to make enormous sacrifices for the good of society
5	I am not afraid to go to bat for the rights of others even if it means I will be ridiculed

Notes: Source: Wright et al. (2013).The values of PSM in the regression analysis below were obtained using factor analysis for the five question items. For the vignette 1 data, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of PSM is 0.835, the KMO value is 0.790, and the p-value of Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity is less than 0.001. For the vignette 2 data, the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of PSM is 0.795, the KMO value is 0.732, and the p-value of Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity is less than 0.001.

Sample

Our experimental respondents were full-time government officials or public institution workers who were studying part-time to complete Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs at five Chinese universities: Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Chongqing University, Tsinghua University, and Renmin University of China. Three of the universities are in northern China and two in southern China; therefore, they are regionally representative. The MPA program in China primarily targets incumbent government officials from Party and state organs as well as practitioners with field experience in public institutions. According to the Civil Servant Law of the People’s Republic of China, their professional responsibilities mainly fall into three categories: comprehensive administration (e.g., staff in general offices and personnel departments), law enforcement (e.g., market regulators in commerce administrations and environmental inspectors in ecological protection agencies), and providing professional technical services (e.g., economists, auditors, and forensic medical examiners in public sectors). As frontline workers in public sectors, they routinely process citizens’ opinions and complaints, thus serving as agents of “bureaucrats' policy responsiveness” analysed in this study. In addition, MPA students have become preferred participants for public administration experiments due to their accessibility to diverse governance contexts and logistical advantages for data collection (Liu and Tang, 2011; Tu and Gong, 2022).

Electronic versions of the questionnaires were created and a quick response (QR) code to access them was distributed to the respondents. Accordingly, the versions of the questionnaire including different vignettes and experimental cues were generated randomly when the respondents scanned the QR code. Each vignette consists three different experiment cues and 75 respondents were enrolled in each group. Thus, totally 225 questionnaire responses were collected for each vignette. In view of our single-factor between-subject experimental design, we set effect size as a medium level of 0.25 and α error probability as 0.05, and then use G*power to calculate its statistical power based on the fixed effects one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. The results show that the power is about 0.93, indicating our sample size can ensure enough statistical power. There were no ethical concerns because all participants were told to be voluntary to participate in this survey and all questionnaires were processed anonymously without any sensitive personal information from the respondents. In addition, no direct benefits were offered to the respondents.

Results

We performed a sample balance test on the distribution of each sampled group. In the data analyses, we calculated and analysed the data for Vignettes 1 and 2 independently. To check whether the distribution of the three groups of samples was balanced for categorical variables, such as Gender and Party, we used contingency tables for the test of variance. For the continuous variables, such as Cohort, Tenure, and Concern, we examined the differences in the covariate means using analysis of variance (ANOVA) (see Table 4). In Vignettes 1 and 2, none of the five variables showed significant group differences, indicating a good balance between the sampled groups in this experiment.

Table 4.

Balance across experimental groups.

Variables		Vignette 1	Vignette 2
Variables		Test for difference among three groups	Test for difference among three groups
Gender	Female	Chi2 = 2.2678, p = .322	Chi2 = 2.0563, p = .358
Gender	Male	Chi2 = 2.2678, p = .322	Chi2 = 2.0563, p = .358
Party	Communist party	Chi2 = 0.1925, p = .908	Chi2 = 0.4257, p = .808
Party	Other	Chi2 = 0.1925, p = .908	Chi2 = 0.4257, p = .808
Cohort	Mean value	F = 0.338, p = .714	F = 0.798, p = .452
Tenure	Mean value	F = 0.084, p = .920	F = 1.011, p = .366
Concern	Mean value	F = 0.285, p = .752	F = 0.067, p = .935

We calculated the mean values for the respondents’ policy responsiveness intentions in different groups of data (see Table 5). The results show that the mean values of respondents’ policy responsiveness intentions in Group 3 were higher than those in Groups 1 and 2 in both Vignettes 1 and 2. Therefore, the respondents’ policy responsiveness intentions were higher under the strategic accountability intervention than in the baseline and functional accountability intervention groups.

Table 5.

Intergroup comparison of policy responsiveness intention.

Vignettes	Issue cases	Groups	N	Average	Standard deviation
Vignette 1	Dust	Group 1	75	3.14	1.316
		Group 2	75	3.68	1.232
		Group 3	75	3.95	1.025
	Noise	Group 1	75	3.44	1.318
		Group 2	75	3.67	1.256
		Group 3	75	3.99	1.046
Vignette 2	Dust	Group 1	75	3.69	1.052
		Group 2	75	3.80	1.103
		Group 3	75	4.05	0.868
	Noise	Group 1	75	3.80	1.053
		Group 2	75	3.79	1.094
		Group 3	75	4.03	0.900

Then, we used regression models to analyse the data in more detail and test the hypotheses further. Both vignettes included two types of pollutants (i.e., dust and noise) in their statements, which resulted in four types of statements for measuring bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness and four dependent variable assignments (see Table 2). Accordingly, we combined the different sample groups to test different hypotheses in Vignettes 1 and 2 and obtained a total of 24 models (see Tables 6 and 7, respectively).

Table 6.

Results of OLS regression analysis: Vignette 1

Variables	Groups 1 and 2				Groups 1 and 3				Groups 1, 2 and 3
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)	(11)	(12)
	Dust	Noise	Dust	Noise	Dust	Noise	Dust	Noise	Dust	Noise	Dust	Noise
FA	0.193	0.143	0.193	0.137					0.192	0.147	0.189	0.143
FA	(0.200)	(0.207)	(0.198)	(0.207)					(0.197)	(0.203)	(0.195)	(0.203)
SA					0.466**	0.481**	0.455**	0.481***	0.448**	0.462**	0.442**	0.458**
SA					(0.188)	(0.185)	(0.186)	(0.183)	(0.186)	(0.185)	(0.185)	(0.184)
PSM	0.451***	0.401***	0.452***	0.433***	0.372***	0.372***	0.428***	0.370**	0.409***	0.380***	0.438***	0.401**
PSM	(0.0860)	(0.0975)	(0.158)	(0.157)	(0.0990)	(0.100)	(0.163)	(0.159)	(0.070)	(0.077)	(0.157)	(0.155)
FA * PSM			−0.001	−0.055							0.007	−0.037
FA * PSM			(0.182)	(0.199)							(0.182)	(0.198)
SA * PSM							−0.111	0.00327			−0.106	−0.021
SA * PSM							(0.187)	(0.178)			(0.183)	(0.178)
Gender	0.136	0.0326	0.136	0.031	0.0497	0.0431	0.0595	0.0428	−0.004	−0.055	0.005	−0.055
Gender	(0.214)	(0.222)	(0.214)	(0.223)	(0.197)	(0.194)	(0.195)	(0.193)	(0.164)	(0.166)	(0.163)	(0.166)
Cohort	0.210	0.272	0.210	0.283	−0.0221	−0.109	0.0109	−0.110	0.070	0.072	0.086	0.077
Cohort	(0.211)	(0.216)	(0.215)	(0.221)	(0.213)	(0.239)	(0.215)	(0.240)	(0.167)	(0.185)	(0.170)	(0.186)
Party	−0.196	−0.162	−0.196	−0.161	−0.0989	−0.0606	−0.111	−0.0602	−0.145	−0.124	−0.157	−0.124
Party	(0.228)	(0.230)	(0.229)	(0.232)	(0.199)	(0.201)	(0.199)	(0.201)	(0.171)	(0.172)	(0.170)	(0.172)
Tenure	−0.00816	−0.0285	−0.008	−0.030	0.00565	0.0260	−0.00159	0.0262	0.013	0.006	0.009	0.006
Tenure	(0.0403)	(0.0443)	(0.041)	(0.045)	(0.0407)	(0.0466)	(0.0420)	(0.0473)	(0.032)	(0.039)	(0.033)	(0.039)
Concern	0.0835	0.120	0.083	0.113	0.0990	0.124	0.0929	0.124	0.055	0.101	0.056	0.098
Concern	(0.133)	(0.143)	(0.137)	(0.145)	(0.132)	(0.134)	(0.135)	(0.134)	(0.104)	(0.111)	(0.107)	(0.112)
Constant	2.788***	2.693***	2.788***	2.708***	3.179***	3.152***	3.188***	3.152***	3.109***	3.015***	3.105***	3.023***
Constant	(0.537)	(0.561)	(0.545)	(0.565)	(0.540)	(0.551)	(0.548)	(0.553)	(0.436)	(0.456)	(0.442)	(0.459)
Observations	150	150	150	150	150	150	150	150	225	225	225	225
R-squared	0.184	0.142	0.184	0.142	0.164	0.173	0.165	0.173	0.176	0.160	0.178	0.160

Notes: FA = Functional accountability, SA = Strategic accountability; Robust standard errors in parentheses; ***p < .01, **p < .05, *p < .1.

Table 7.

Results of OLS regression analysis: Vignette 2

Variables	Groups 1 and 2				Groups 1 and 3				Groups 1, 2 and 3
	(13)	(14)	(15)	(16)	(17)	(18)	(19)	(20)	(21)	(22)	(23)	(24)
	Dust	Noise	Dust	Noise	Dust	Noise	Dust	Noise	Dust	Noise	Dust	Noise
FA	−0.0186	−0.133	−0.027	−0.143					0.015	−0.100	−0.000	−0.117
FA	(0.158)	(0.155)	(0.158)	(0.154)					(0.160)	(0.157)	(0.159)	(0.155)
SA					0.268*	0.137	0.271*	0.141	0.268*	0.138	0.266*	0.134
SA					(0.149)	(0.150)	(0.147)	(0.147)	(0.149)	(0.149)	(0.147)	(0.147)
PSM	0.382***	0.387***	0.452***	0.469***	0.360***	0.373***	0.458***	0.476***	0.333***	0.340***	0.445***	0.463***
PSM	(0.0872)	(0.0874)	(0.130)	(0.131)	(0.0915)	(0.0933)	(0.121)	(0.121)	(0.078)	(0.078)	(0.136)	(0.136)
FA * PSM			−0.146	−0.172							−0.142	−0.169
FA * PSM			(0.178)	(0.176)							(0.186)	(0.183)
SA * PSM							−0.291	−0.303*			−0.272	−0.281
SA * PSM							(0.178)	(0.177)			(0.185)	(0.184)
Gender	−0.184	−0.126	−0.197	−0.140	−0.0849	−0.0324	−0.0678	−0.0145	−0.031	0.019	−0.026	0.022
Gender	(0.177)	(0.178)	(0.175)	(0.176)	(0.162)	(0.164)	(0.161)	(0.163)	(0.136)	(0.137)	(0.134)	(0.135)
Cohort	−0.185	−0.231	−0.181	−0.227	−0.132	−0.155	−0.119	−0.142	−0.077	−0.098	−0.069	−0.091
Cohort	(0.204)	(0.202)	(0.209)	(0.206)	(0.203)	(0.204)	(0.203)	(0.203)	(0.162)	(0.161)	(0.163)	(0.162)
Party	−0.356*	−0.495**	−0.349*	−0.487**	−0.143	−0.250	−0.117	−0.222	−0.301*	−0.408**	−0.286*	−0.393**
Party	(0.211)	(0.206)	(0.208)	(0.203)	(0.214)	(0.213)	(0.212)	(0.210)	(0.173)	(0.172)	(0.171)	(0.170)
Tenure	0.0179	0.0304	0.020	0.033	0.0262	0.0366	0.0271	0.0376	0.004	0.012	0.006	0.014
Tenure	(0.0380)	(0.0376)	(0.039)	(0.038)	(0.0418)	(0.0419)	(0.0419)	(0.0419)	(0.032)	(0.032)	(0.033)	(0.032)
Concern	0.00491	0.00543	0.004	0.005	0.000852	0.00242	−0.00674	−0.00548	0.016	0.009	0.011	0.004
Concern	(0.130)	(0.129)	(0.130)	(0.128)	(0.123)	(0.124)	(0.127)	(0.127)	(0.102)	(0.101)	(0.103)	(0.102)
Constant	4.473***	4.686***	4.464***	4.676***	4.053***	4.193***	4.027***	4.166***	4.126***	4.316***	4.117***	4.308***
Constant	(0.531)	(0.525)	(0.542)	(0.537)	(0.534)	(0.533)	(0.552)	(0.551)	(0.439)	(0.438)	(0.447)	(0.447)
Observations	150	150	150	150	150	150	150	150	225	225	225	225
R-squared	0.187	0.201	0.192	0.209	0.161	0.154	0.180	0.174	0.142	0.144	0.152	0.156

Notes: FA = Functional accountability, SA = Strategic accountability; Robust standard errors in parentheses; ***p < .01, **p < .05, *p < .1.

In vignette 1, we included functional accountability in the model as a placebo test in Models 1–4. Models 5–8 were based on data from Groups 1 and 3 and tested the effect of strategic accountability on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. In Models 9–12, we integrated three groups of data to simultaneously examine the impacts of functional accountability and strategic accountability. Experiments can be used to test the treatment effects and their interactions with relevant individual characteristics (Tu and Gong, 2022). Therefore, interaction terms between accountability and PSM were respectively incorporated into the aforementioned models to test for the presence of a crowding-out effect between the two terms. Similarly, Table 7 shows the results in vignette 2.

First, H1 and H1b are supported because the effect of strategic accountability showed a significantly positive effect in the most contexts; only in the noise policy data from Vignette 2, it was not significant but the coefficient was still positive. Functional accountability was not significant in all the models, indicating that the effect of functional accountability on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness was not significant. Thus, the placebo test results further confirm the role of strategic accountability. That is, strategic accountability indeed plays a significant role in promoting bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness, rather than any form of accountability being equally effective.

Second, the findings provide strong support for H2. PSM showed a significantly positive effect in all models. Moreover, the significance was at the level of 0.01 in most of the models, suggesting that government officials with higher PSM demonstrate stronger policy responsiveness intentions. In addition, this effect was strongly consistent across policy contexts (e.g. dust pollution and noise pollution) and among government officials in different roles (e.g. bureaucrats in the online message response agency and bureaucrats in the environmental protection department). This means it is universal that PSM can drive local bureaucrats to engage in policy responsiveness.

Finally, the results do not support H3, H3a, and H3b. The coefficients of the interaction terms between accountability and PSM were insignificant in most of the models. Therefore, the results showed no statistically significant crowding-out effect for accountability and PSM when acting on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness in the current experiment. However, the regression coefficient of the interaction term was significantly negative in Model 20. In the rest of the models except Models 8 and 11, although the regression coefficients of the interaction terms were not significant, the directions were negative. This implied that accountability still has the potential to weaken the effect of PSM on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness intentions.

It is notable that the experimental sample displays a higher proportion of Communist Party members relative to non-members. While this imbalance reflects population realities, we systematically assess its potential implications through three analytical lenses. First, our balance check tests indicate no significant differences in party affiliation distribution between treatment and control conditions, confirming successful randomization on this characteristic. The randomization balance safeguards against potential bias in our experimental results. Second, overrepresentation of party members may amplify potential multicollinearity problems. Our tests show that variance inflation factor (VIF) values in models with and without party membership variables are smaller than the acceptable thresholds, indicating no serious multicollinearity. Third, we also rerun separate models using party member samples and non-party member samples, respectively. Results show that the direction and significance of the effects of the core variables remain largely robust. While these robustness checks reveal limited evidence of bias, we caution against generalizing our results to contexts with different party membership structures arbitrarily.

Discussion

Our experimental findings verify the existence of bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness and demonstrate significant effects of both strategic accountability and PSM on it. These findings have some theoretical and empirical contributions. The first contribution lies in conceptualising bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness, which bridges macro- and micro-level responsiveness research. While macro-level policy responsiveness has predominantly been examined at regional levels with a focus on political actors (Liu et al., 2024a; Powell, 2004; Roberts and Kim, 2011), our study extends policy responsiveness to local executive bureaucrats, establishing a novel micro-level analytical pathway. Compared with recent micro-level studies measuring responsiveness with indicators like response rates and speed (Meng and Su, 2021; Poole, 2019), our discussion of bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness touches on policy adaptation. That is, executive bureaucrats need to explore similar case responses and institutional solutions. Theoretically, this elucidates how executive bureaucrats – who constitute the administrative majority – develop and exercise policy responsiveness, thereby significantly expanding the scope of policy responsiveness research. In practical term, it challenges their conventional portrayal as mere policy implementers. As frontline actors, they exhibit the capacity to translate “public discourse” into “policy language” during citizen-state interactions, thereby helping bridge critical informational asymmetries in policy formulation.

Secondly, it advances research on external interventions and intrinsic motivations by examining the interactive effects of accountability and PSM on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. Extrinsic controls and intrinsic motivation are two fundamental drivers that critically shape bureaucrats’ behaviours (Frey and Jegen, 2001; Tu, 2024). Regarding variable selection, while most scholars operationalise external interventions using rewards or monetary incentives (Ki, 2022; Kim and Bak, 2020; Kroll and Porumbescu, 2019), this study extends current literature by incorporating accountability rules as an alternative measure. Empirically, our findings challenge core propositions of the motivation crowding theory (Park and Word, 2012; Ryan and Deci, 2002), indicating that the motivation crowding-out effect may not hold universally. Two possible reasons for this are that Chinese bureaucrats have institutionally acclimatised to accountability systems characterised by stringent controls, or respondents currently perceive accountability pressures as insufficiently intense to crowd out effects of PSM. Furthermore, though PSM is one foundational construct in public administration research, there is little empirical evidence linking PSM to bureaucrats’ responsiveness. This study provides robust experimental evidence that PSM significantly enhances policy responsiveness, challenging previous questionnaire-based findings (Loon, 2016).

Thirdly, this study proposes a novel accountability typology in public administration research and provides empirical evidence from non-Western contexts. Building on distinctions in accountability content, we differentiate between functional and strategic accountability mechanisms, adapting and extending existing models from NGO accountability literature (Ebrahim, 2003; Najam, 1996; Pilon and Brouard, 2022) to public sector contexts. Our experimental results demonstrate that strategic accountability exerts significantly positive effects on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness, whereas functional accountability does not. This differentiation highlights that different accountability mechanisms have distinct capacity to enhance bureaucrats’ responsiveness. The design of accountability systems may strongly influence behavioural outcomes – an under-explored area in current research (Aleksovska et al., 2019). The functional-strategic framework emphasises the need for precise specification of accountability objectives and expected actions/consequences in institutional design.

Moreover, this study also implies the potential importance of social accountability in shaping policy responsiveness. According to the typology proposed by Pérez-Durán (2024), our experimental cues correspond to vertical accountability, while the experimental scenarios capture social accountability. We operationalised top-down accountability rules through experimental cues to measure functional and strategic accountability, reflecting higher authorities’ requirements regarding response consequences. In view that online petition platforms are important channels for civic engagement and enable citizens to hold public officials accountable (Liu et al., 2024a), the experimental scenarios focusing on citizens’ online petitions also constitute a form of social accountability. Although we do not directly assess the effects of social accountability, our experimental measures of policy responsiveness offer valuable insights. The mean policy responsiveness score exceeded 3 (on a 5-point scale), indicating respondents favored amending corresponding policies in response to citizens’ online opinions over maintaining the status quo. Notably, the control group results demonstrate that citizens' online opinions could stimulate bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness intentions even when vertical accountability was absent. Though existing research has demonstrated that aggregated citizens’ petitions significantly influence public policies at the macro level (Liu et al., 2024a), our findings identify the micro-foundations of this process by tracing how citizens’ petitions shape individual bureaucrats’ decision-making.

This study also provides new evidence about the importance and effectiveness of accountability in non-Western contexts. A systematic review indicates that fewer than 5% of experimental accountability studies have been conducted outside Western contexts (Aleksovska et al., 2019), underscoring the urgent need for context-sensitive investigation in alternative governance systems (Pérez-Durán, 2024). While Western scholarship predominantly emphasises accountability failures and multi-stakeholder dilemmas (Aleksovska et al., 2021; Brummel, 2025; Willems and Van Dooren, 2012), our evidence demonstrates how alternative institutional designs can sustain effective accountability pathways in China. Extant research argues that Chinese local governments exhibit stronger responsiveness to vertical than social accountability (Ye et al., 2023), but we propose a novel perspective transcending this contrast-based analytical framework. Our experiments show that vertical accountability can enhance bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness to citizens' online opinions. This indicates that vertical accountability can reinforce social accountability, challenging the Western accountability conflict assumption (Koppell, 2005).

Conclusion

Building on macro-level policy responsiveness literature, this study extends the connotation of policy responsiveness to local individual executive bureaucrats and propose the concept of bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. After establishing a theoretical framework integrating external interventions and intrinsic motivations, we use an experimental design to analyse how accountability and PSM jointly shape bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. The results show that strategic accountability can better stimulate bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness than functional accountability and that bureaucrats with high PSM are more likely to show stronger policy responsiveness intentions. Moreover, different from the motivation crowding theory, we do not find enough evidence about the crowding-out effects of vertical accountability on the role of PSM. These findings highlight the active role of bureaucrats in policy responsiveness and provide valuable insights for designing accountable institutions.

Our findings yield three key practical implications. First, policymakers should prioritise cultivating bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness, which requires multidimensional competencies -including reactivity, empathy, situational awareness, and regulatory sensitivity - to accurately identify public needs (Stanica et al., 2022; Vigoda, 2000). Crucially, this requires building bureaucrats' capacity to systematically derive policy insights from public feedback. For policymakers, it offers dual advantages to cultivate their subordinate bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness: providing vital understanding of citizens’ policy perceptions and simultaneously facilitating long-term solutions to local governance challenges. Second, strategic accountability could be institutionalised as a governance tool to enhance bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness through well-designed regulations. In most centralized regimes, there is a need for the public to influence the government (Wang et al., 2022). To enhance governmental responsiveness, such regimes must not only maintain openness to external accountability but also strategically institutionalise internal accountability structures within their hierarchical systems. In the digital era characterised by ubiquitous online civic expression, we can use hierarchical accountability instruments to motivate bureaucrats’ responsiveness to digital public sentiment. Third, it is also important to nurture bureaucrats’ PSM because the experimental evidence supports the positive effect of PSM on bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness. Actually, harnessing the power of intrinsic motives can generate more sustainable impacts than extrinsic incentives (Kácha and Ruggeri, 2019).

This study has some limitations that warrant attention in future. First, we mainly operationalise key constructs using single-item measures, though we adopt multiple scenarios and policy contexts to enhance contextual variation. This approach constrains our capacity to capture conceptual complexity in accountability mechanisms and bureaucrats’ policy responsiveness, and we suggest that future replication studies should adopt more nuanced measurement scales and sophisticated experimental designs. Second, the limited sample size may reduce the statistical power and limit the generalisability of the findings to broader populations. Thus, future research should adopt multi-regional collaborations and longitudinal designs to improve sample size, sample representativeness, and analytical rigor. Third, the experimental interventions focused on vertical accountability. Future studies should examine whether the functional-strategic typology holds for other accountability forms - particularly the social, horizontal, and hybrid accountability mechanisms prevalent in modern governance. Fourth, while the conceptual framework is developed in China’s environmental policy context, the operationalisation of bureaucrats' policy responsiveness as institutional solution-seeking behaviours requires empirical validation in other systems. Comparative studies across policy domains and national contexts could elucidate the concept’s boundary conditions and cross-context validity.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (22CGL066) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72474132).

ORCID iDs

Yao Liu

Fanrong Meng

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.*

Notes

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