Is Warmth More Persuasive? The Effects of Street‐Level Bureaucrats' Warmth and Competence on Citizens' Compliance During Pandemic Emergencies

ABSTRACT Compliance with government rules and guidelines is essential for effectively managing pandemic emergencies. Few studies have examined how street‐level bureaucrats (SLBs)' behavioral performance shapes citizen compliance decisions. This study combines the stereotype content model (SCM) with the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) of persuasion in a large‐scale randomized between‐subjects survey experiment conducted in China. The study tests the hypothesis that citizens' impressions of warmth and competence toward SLBs have respective and interactive positive persuasive effects on their compliance with government rules and guidelines during a pandemic emergency. The study finds that the impressions of competence and warmth are always important for citizen compliance in a pandemic emergency; and the impression of warmth matters more for citizen compliance for competent bureaucrats. An interaction effect between impressions of SLBs' warmth and competence in predicting citizen compliance was also confirmed. Citizens are more inclined to comply when they perceive SLBs as both competent and warm. The study concludes that citizens' compliance with government rules and guidelines during a pandemic emergency partly depends on their impressions of the quality of bureaucratic encounters. Thus, probing and highlighting citizens' impressions of SLBs during citizen–bureaucratic interactions is theoretically and practically worthwhile.