Can Government Initiatives Increase Citizen Coproduction? Results of a Randomized Field Experiment

The study focuses on whether government initiatives can increase citizen coproduction of public services, that is, citizens' input to the production of public services. This question has received considerable attention among scholars and governments, but the causal effect of government initiatives on citizen coproduction has been extremely difficult to measure due to endogeneity problems. Moreover, the literature has devoted limited attention to the important question of which citizens are likely to increase coproduction efforts as a consequence of initiatives (e.g., are the citizens with the greatest need for the service also affected?). I address these shortcomings using a randomized field experiment on publicly provided language support for immigrant children, including more than 600 families. I focus on initiatives that provide citizens with resources relevant for their coproduction. The results show that government initiatives can increase citizens' coproduction, also among the citizens with the greatest need for the service.