Public Perceptions of Public Organization Performance: Dual Evidence from Explicit and Implicit Measures

While there is growing recognition of the importance of understanding public organization performance from the public perception perspective, inconsistent and even contradictory conclusions have been drawn regarding how the public perceives such performance. Thus, accurately and comprehensively measuring the public’s attitudes toward public organization performance remains an unresolved issue. This study employs the dual attitudes model of social cognition, utilizing both explicit and implicit measurement approaches, and conducts two explicit experimental studies and one implicit experiment to examine how the public perceives public organization performance within the Chinese context. The results indicate that compared to private organizations, the public holds more positive views on public organization performance, showing a pro-public sector preference rather than an anti-public-sector prejudice. Moreover, this preference effect demonstrates stability across different measurement methods and contextual applications. This research pioneers the application of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measuring perceptions of public organization performance, offering dual evidence on how the public evaluates public organization performance within a public-dominant economy where public organizations vastly outnumber nonpublic ones in service provision. The findings suggest that academia should recognize that the concept of “anti-public sector bias” may lack universal explanatory power. This contributes to a more comprehensive and objective understanding within academia of the dynamic nature of state-society relations across differing political and cultural contexts. For public management practitioners, this finding implies that they can embrace and assert their “public” identity with greater confidence - viewing it as a strategic asset rather than a burden.