Reporting Intensity Dual-Margin Divergence

In Simple Words

Think of an online review site where adding real-world penalties for bad drivers makes average passengers hesitant to press the "Report" button. But the aggrieved passengers who do press it leave maximum 1-star reviews and write detailed descriptions of bad behavior because they know their review actually carries teeth.

Research question

Policy makers assume that adding formal consequences to customer complaint systems will uniformly increase reporting. However, evaluating participation requires separating the decision to report at all from how severely to complain once reporting occurs.

Participants

N = 164 trusting patients (subsample from 216 total patients) in Nairobi, Kenya, evaluating complaint choices across discrete return scenarios.

Study Design

Econometric estimation of patient decisions using strategy elicitation, differentiating binary complaint filing probability (extensive margin) from the number of complaint cards sent (1 to 5 cards, intensive margin) across accountability treatments relative to Complaint Box control.

Results

While tangible provider consequences reduced the overall probability of a patient filing a complaint by 7.4 to 10.3 percentage points (extensive margin), conditional on filing a complaint, patients increased complaint severity by sending 1.053 additional frowning cards in Peer Disclosure (p < 0.05) and 0.771 additional cards in Monetary Penalty (p < 0.05), representing a 33% to 44% increase over the control mean of 2.436 cards.

Takeaway

Separate complaint system metrics into participation rate and grievance severity indicators to accurately interpret citizen feedback data when designing public service oversight mechanisms.

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Percentage points

The difference between two percentages.

ExampleA rise from 40% to 50% is 10 percentage points. Relative to the starting value, that is a 25% increase.

Office for National Statistics · Percentages ↗Read more about percentage points →

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