Policymakers' Preferences Over Public–Private Modes of Service Delivery and Credit‐Claiming: Experimental Evidence

ABSTRACT A survey experiment on US elected local policymakers allows us to test how incumbents strategically use infrastructure projects in their electoral campaigns. Each local official is presented with a scenario in which they are asked to imagine that they are going to run for office again and that a new infrastructure project has just been approved in their district. We manipulate the type of project and whether it is delivered by the local government, private actors, or a mixture of the two. We find that the mode of delivery influences credit‐claiming behavior: respondents are more likely to claim credit for projects where the government is involved in delivery, even while respondents' expectations of the projects' ultimate benefit to the community are similar across delivery mode. This electoral connection to the mode of delivery illustrates the potential for bias in project delivery that could compromise the efficient use of public revenue.