Responsiveness to requests for constituency service: A field experiment on local councilors in South Korea

Legislators’ responsiveness to citizens constitutes a crucial element of democracy. Nevertheless, previous studies conducted in established democracies found that only about half of legislators respond to requests for constituency service and that they are more responsive to certain groups of citizens than others. To address such limitations, we conducted a field experiment in South Korea and found that only 12% of local councilors are responsive. We also found that despite such low responsiveness, local councilors were more responsive when the fictitious citizen introduced himself as a self-employed person running a small business versus an employee working at a small company.