Who Is Worth Investing in? Need, Conduct and Frontline Diagnosis in Activation Services

ABSTRACT Activation‐oriented welfare systems increasingly rely on frontline workers to make early diagnostic judgements about whether clients warrant further support. Yet it remains unclear whether these assessments are organised primarily around objective need or around conduct. Using a factorial survey experiment with 144 Czech public employment service workers and 2880 vignette evaluations, this article shows that jobseeker cooperativeness is the strongest predictor of support for further state intervention. It outweighs several indicators of disadvantage, including material hardship, care commitments and recent labour‐market detachment. Although health limitations, dependent children and longer current registration increase support, their effects are substantially smaller. The article argues that, in the setting studied here, frontline diagnosis is shaped less by need than by conduct‐related cues, especially cooperativeness.