What factors underlie burden tolerance in South Korea? Policy implementation domain, administrative efficiency, and bureaucratic personality

Abstract

Although administrative burden has been studied in relation to social policy, the experience of policy implementation as onerous is relevant to all policy domains, and citizens can experience burden in virtually any encounter with the state. Moreover, perceptions of administrative burden can be influenced by administrative values, such as efficiency. Burden tolerance captures an individual’s belief that the compliance, learning, and psychological costs associated with policy implementation are legitimate and functional, and consequently their willingness to impose these costs on policy targets. We hypothesise that burden tolerance is conditioned by both policy implementation domain and the efficiency of the implementing organisation. Additionally, we link bureaucratic personality, or the tendency to view rules as intrinsically desirable and legitimate, to burden tolerance. We test our hypotheses using a representative sample of South Korean citizens and a survey experiment. Our results suggest that, first and contrary to our expectations, policy domain does not affect burden tolerance. Second, knowledge about inefficiency negatively affects tolerance. Third, bureaucratic personality is positively related to tolerance. We also discuss the contextual aspects of administrative burden, and particularly how the East Asian and Korean policy context may have implications for the generalisability of the administrative burden concept.

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