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The growing complexity of public policies in smart urban transformation demands nuanced policy advocacy to shape public support. Using the policy scenario of autonomous taxi deployment, we conducted a 2 (official leaders vs. civilian opinion leaders) × 2 (personal values vs. social values) vignette experiment based on 1,146 survey responses collected from residents in Wuhan, a leading pilot city for autonomous taxi services in China. The study reveals that, compared with the socially oriented framing commonly emphasized in mainstream policy discourse, policy advocacy highlighting personal values has a stronger effect on mobilizing public support. In addition, the difference in effectiveness between government and civic advocates is not statistically significant. Further analysis shows that these effects are mediated by changes in public attitudes. This study identifies the psychological mechanisms through which policy advocacy shapes public supportive intention, deepens the understanding of the framework effect of policy advocacy, and provides policy implications for enhancing advocacy effectiveness in the context of smart urban transformation.
Wang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.