RiPPP – Risk in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs): Behavioral experiments on Risk Preference, Risk Perception, and Risk Participation
Why do people behave differently toward public organizations compared to private organizations?
What are the consequences of this behavior for society as a whole?
In this project, we explore behavioral biases in the interaction of individual and corporate actors in the context of public private partnerships. We follow novel empirical streams of research in the field of public administration and public management by employing empirical tools from both psychology and behavioral economics to investigate fundamental behavioral asymmetries in the preference, perception, and participation of risk.
Public organizations are often stigmatized in public opinion: Even though they are entrusted with the creation and maintenance of public goods and services, they are often perceived as slow and inefficient. This creates a large number of problems for public organizations ranging from practical challenges such as difficulties in attracting employees caused by a lack of public service motivation to fundamental questions of the legitimacy of public organizations as a whole.
To explore the underlying reasons of these heuristic public opinions, we conduct original research on the prevalence and the magnitude of perceptional biases toward public and private organizations in various contexts.
In this way, the findings of the RiPPP project
- will increase public welfare by enabling both public and non-public actors in PPPs to improve coordination and collaboration efficacy;
- will help to identify both favorable and unfavorable mechanisms of behavior and coordination and, based on these findings, to deduce practical strategic and operative advice for public managers – especially when put under pressure and in inferior negotiation positions;
- help actors to understand and cope with the emergence of irrational heuristic behavior in PPPs and cross-sector collaborations;
- shed light onto the cause and effects of latent aspects of coordination under risk asymmetry such as group-size, power structures, and network effects;
- introduce novel psychological and neuro-economic research methods such as zTree experiments and the IAT (Implicit-Association Test) into behavioral public administration research.
- Duration: 11/2015-05/2018
- Project lead: Prof. Dr. Rick Vogel, Project member: Asst. Prof. Dr. Kristina Weißmüller
- Sponsor: University funds