Citizen requests and the price of public information: An experimental test

Abstract

Pricing of public goods is particularly challenging for public services that are strongly rights-based in character. Such is the case of freedom of information requesting procedures. Costs have implications for how citizens will treat requesting procedures as well as how their views and attitudes towards procedures will be affected. This study examines these causes and consequences using an online experiment with 925 citizens. The findings show that even low costs can have an influence on how willing citizens are to submit requests as well as their satisfaction with the procedure and perception of fairness. Public service motivation and political orientation moderate these effects, but only to a small degree. These findings have implications for citizen participation policies given that citizen attitudes to the right to information depends strongly on trade-offs between the value of information and financial costs of requesting.