How the experience of administrative burdens affects clients’ psychological well-being: the role of negativity bias

Abstract A core claim of the administrative burden literature is that the experience of frictions during administrative encounters can generate psychological costs. Using a split-ballot survey experiment with a question order design (n = 3,812), we show that being asked to recall administrative encounters in a welfare program negatively affects people’s psychological affect. Further, we show that the responses to burdens are asymmetric and consistent with a pattern of negativity bias in how people recall citizen-state encounters. Being asked to recall encounters induces negative affect, even though the majority of respondents reported having experienced low levels of administrative burden. Respondents’ negative psychological reactions are driven by individuals who rated their experience as burdensome in survey questions or reported a bad experience in open-ended responses. Positive reported experiences were not associated with more positive affect. The results also suggest that the relationship between the experience of burden and negative affect is more pronounced for women, liberals, Whites, and those in poor or fair health. Moreover, those with neutral political ideology and those in very good or excellent health experienced decreased positive affect. A key theoretical implication is that the experience of psychological costs is shaped by negativity bias: negative interactions have a larger effect on outcomes than positive interactions. A practical implication is that governments should focus attention on reducing burdensome or otherwise negative encounters.