Tag: Policy Design

Policy design and policy feedback in welfare retrenchment: A survey experiment in China

by Alex Jingwei He, Ling Zhu, and Jiwei Qian

Beyond conveying information about policy instruments, established government programs shape beliefs and expectations about policy benefits and burdens, as well as how individuals will be affected by existing policies. Social groups can then react to the information embedded in the design of policies, which, in turn, may strengthen or weaken them. The case study reported in this article explores how policy designs condition citizens’ behavioral and attitudinal responses to welfare retrenchment reforms in China. This article expands on recent policy feedback and comparative public policy literature by exploring how various policy designs, combined with individual proximity to reform, produce mixed responses. The article is guided by three hypotheses:

  1. Policy design that preserves individuals’ material self-interest will reduce opposition to welfare retrenchment reform.
  2. Policy design that improves the well-being of all in society will reduce opposition to welfare retrenchment reform.
  3. Individuals proximate to welfare retrenchment reform will exhibit stronger opposition than those with less policy proximity.

In 2020, the Chinese government engaged in a public consultation program regarding a proposed reform of the social health insurance system, which sought to reduce resources in individuals’ medical savings accounts. The authors conducted a survey experiment to gauge citizens’ responses to the proposed reforms and their hypothetical behavioral responses should the reforms go into effect. The survey participants were working and retired adults with social health insurance coverage and permanent residential status in Guangdong Province. Respondents were identified through a mature pre-existing sample and contacted via an online survey. The experiment measured socioeconomic characteristics and opposition to the healthcare reform before and after randomly receiving one of two policy design scenarios:

  1. Treatment Group 1 – Benefit-All Design: Reform will increase benefit generosity for both outpatient and inpatient care for social health insurance enrollees.
  2. Treatment Group 2 – Benefit-Family Design: Reform will allow individuals to use medical savings accounts to cover the healthcare expenses of their immediate family members.

The authors used a 1-4 Likert scale to measure opposition to the retrenchment reform. They measured demographic characteristics using a set of ordinal variables. They developed logistic regression models comparing group means with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 1 compares the mean opposition scores between groups before and after receiving the treatment message. Before treatment, the baseline preferences of the two groups were statistically similar. While both treatment messages reduced opposition, Treatment Group 2 (Benefit-Family Design) became more supportive of the reform compared to Treatment Group 1 (Benefit-All Design). At the same time, participants with higher educational attainment, poor health status, and large families were statistically more inclined to oppose the reform across both groups. These findings suggest that citizens prioritized preserving their material self-interest over supporting societal well-being. The authors therefore argue that sharing information on how a policy design allocates or reallocates resources garners meaningful attitudinal shifts. Therefore, this analysis supports hypotheses 1 and 2.

Figure 1. Comparing mean opposition scores before and after treatment. Vertical bars in the figure are the 95% confidence intervals.

Figure 2 compared whether the reduction of opposition to the reform varied by individuals’ proximity, specifically the frequency of medical savings account utilization. Based on the results, participants in Treatment Group 2 (Benefit-Family Design) who used their accounts at least once in the last 12 months showed significantly higher support for the reform compared to those in Treatment Group 1 (Benefit-All Design). Furthermore, individuals in Treatment Group 2 (Benefit-Family Design) who used their accounts more frequently (8-10 times) reported significantly higher opposition. These findings suggest that opposition to the reform increases as the frequency of utilization increases, which supports hypothesis 3.

Figure 2. Comparing mean opposition scores before and after treatment. Vertical bars in the figure are the 95% confidence intervals.

This article explores the significance of bridging policy design and feedback theories to better understand public response to the allocation and redistribution of material resources. While existing literature focuses on mass public opinion and participation behavior after policy adoption, this case study challenges scholars to examine citizens’ prospective assessments before policy changes as well. The authors suggest that future research should assess short-term feedback effects and long-term changes in those initial responses throughout the policy process. Unlike previous research, the findings reveal different sources of heterogeneous feedback effects other than partisanship, which vary by specific policy designs and individual experiences.

Read the original article in Policy Studies Journal:

He, Alex Jingwei, Ling Zhu and Jiwei Qian. 2025. “Policy Design and Policy Feedback in Welfare Retrenchment: A Survey Experiment in China.” Policy Studies Journal 53(2): 307–327. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12569.

About the Authors

Alex Jingwei is Associate Professor in the Division of Public Policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Acting Director of the Institute for Public Policy at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), where he also serves as the Co-Director of the Master of Public Policy (MPP) Program. He specializes in policy process theories, health policy and governance, and social welfare reforms. He received his PhD degree in Public Policy from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.

Ling Zhu is Professor of Political Science at the University of Houston. Her research interests include public management, health disparities, social equity in health care access, as well as the management of local health care networks. She received her Ph.D in Political Science at Texas A&M University and joined the faculty at University of Houston.

Jiwei Qian is Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. He currently serves as the secretary of the East Asian Social Policy Research Network (EASP). His research interests lie in health economics, political economy, and development economics. He obtained his B.Sc. in computer science from Fudan University, China and Ph.D. degree in Economics from the National University of Singapore.

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The interactive effects of policies: Insights for policy feedback theory from a qualitative study on homelessness

by Anna Kopec

Existing policy feedback literature on participation examines how policy designs shape political behavior and argues that policies can encourage some people to participate whilst discouraging others. This prompts the inquiry: how do the effects of policy design characteristics interact? How might the positive effects of one element of a policy, for example, interact with the negative effects of another to influence participation of a marginalized group? How might multiple negative or positive effects influence participation? To explore these complex effects, this study compares how homelessness policies affect political engagement in Melbourne, Australia, and Toronto, Canada.

Drawing on 118 qualitative interviews with individuals experiencing homelessness, service providers, and policymakers, this comparative study explores how the effects of policy design characteristics (i.e., distribution of benefit, generosity, eligibility, visibility, delivery design, and integration) work together to either mobilize or discourage political engagement. Table 1 defines these terms below:

Table 1. Policy design characteristic operationalization.

Figure 1 demonstrates how the interaction of multiple policies, through their design characteristics, influences political participation. These effects are shaped by the resources allocated, the signals policies send about individuals’ roles in society, and their broader impact on institutional capacity to facilitate engagement.

Figure 1. Interactive effects of policy characteristics on participation.

The qualitative interview data reveals diverse service access among participants, highlighting key variations in characteristics, particularly visibility, delivery, and integration. Table 2 outlines the policy areas by city and sector, detailing policy characteristics and their effects on engagement as reported by participants. While both cities have many negative policy effects, Melbourne’s housing and health policies showed more positive impacts, particularly in integration, visibility, and delivery.

Table 2. Policy design characteristics of policies utilized by the sample of participants and effects on participation.

Notably, Table 3 illustrates that individuals experiencing homelessness actively engage in various efforts to drive change. While 56-64% of participants reported voting in their last federal election, over 90% engaged in actions such as peer work, providing organizational feedback, and joining advisory groups.

Table 3. Participation according to venues in Melbourne and Toronto.

The way in which different policy design characteristics interact can either amplify exclusion or help counteract it, depending on how services are structured and delivered. For example, integrated service delivery can moderate the negative effects of means-tested programs with strict eligibility rules. In Melbourne, social workers traveling to service centers helped reduce barriers related to eligibility and stigma. In contrast, Toronto’s lack of visibility and integration often left participants feeling isolated.

Policy feedback scholars must pay closer attention to the lived experiences of marginalized populations. These perspectives reveal how policy design and the interplay of its characteristics directly shape political participation. Without this understanding, we risk overlooking the conditions under which participation influences policy or the ways we might create spaces that meaningfully support civic engagement.

This research highlights how policies are structured and delivered, not just how their content affects democratic engagement. Integrated, visible services can empower marginalized individuals to engage politically, even amid social and economic instability.

For marginalized and targeted populations, policy design can dictate their civic participation and relationship with the state. Too often, policies reinforce exclusion, further distancing individuals from decisions that directly impact their lives. By examining where and how these populations participate, we gain critical insight into whether their voices are meaningfully reflected in future policymaking.

Read the original article in Policy Studies Journal:

Kopec, Anna. 2025. “The Interactive Effects of Policies: Insights For Policy Feedback Theory From a Qualitative Study on Homelessness.” Policy Studies Journal 53(2): 243–262. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12532.

About the Author

Anna Kopec is an Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy at Carleton University. Her research agenda examines the relationship between political participation and public policy among marginalized populations in Western welfare states. How do policy designs influence the political agency of vulnerable groups, and how in turn do such groups participate to bring about changes to the policies and systems they interact with? This comparative work focuses on populations experiencing homelessness. A secondary research agenda examines intersectionality and homelessness, with a consideration of how policies and services individuals access influence how certain communities participate.

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Institutional Fit and Policy Design in Water Governance: Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts 

by Tomás Olivier & Sechindra Vallury

Water governance is a critical challenge that demands locally tailored solutions to address diverse social and ecological conditions. Our new paper explores this through Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts (NRDs)—a basin-level governance arrangement created to manage groundwater resources. We investigated how well NRDs design policies to fit their local social-ecological contexts and the influence of broader institutional mandates on those policies.

The overarching goal of our research was to bridge the gap between institutional fit and policy design literature. To do this, we aim to better understand the drivers behind institutional fit—how well governing arrangements address local resource challenges—and the mechanisms shaping policy design in decentralized governance systems like Nebraska’s NRDs. Our research question was: how do actors in governing arrangements design policy outputs to fit to their social, ecological, and institutional environment?

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Figure 1. Nebraska’s Natural Resource Districts and the status of their Integrated Management Plans. The map was generated using data provided by the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources.

Nebraska’s NRDs are an ideal case for examining institutional fit. Established in 1972, these districts are defined by river basins and tasked with managing shared resources like water, soil, and land. Each NRD develops its own management plans and groundwater rules, which vary widely due to differing local conditions such as precipitation, population, and agricultural needs. This setting allows for a comparative study of how context influences policy design across NRDs.

Using topic modeling, k-means clustering, and fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA), we analyzed Integrated Management Plans (IMPs) and Groundwater Management Rules and Regulations (GMRRs) produced by 23 NRDs. We found evidence that the design of NRD outputs (plans and rules) aligned with local biophysical conditions. NRDs in areas with higher precipitation or greater groundwater demand tended to emphasize water management priorities tailored to those conditions. For instance, NRDs in drier western Nebraska prioritized policies addressing groundwater scarcity, as illustrated by their IMPs’ focus on water quantity controls (see Figure 2).

Image Description

Figure 2. Topic model of stemmed text from Integrated Management Plans of 23 Natural Resource Districts.

Our results also suggested that NRDs with a state mandate to develop Integrated Management Plans (IMPs) produced more distinct, context-sensitive policy outputs than those without mandates. NRDs with state-mandated IMPs showed lower textual similarity across their policy outputs, indicating more tailored responses to local conditions. Voluntary IMPs, on the other hand, often relied on boilerplate language, reflecting less contextual customization.

The fsQCA analysis identified multiple pathways for achieving institutional fit, involving combinations of factors like population size, precipitation, and state mandates. For example, NRDs with large populations and high precipitation but no state mandate tended to produce outputs with less focus on enforcement mechanisms, highlighting how context shapes policy emphasis (see Table 2).

Image Description

This study underscores the importance of institutional fit in natural resource governance. It shows that decentralized systems like Nebraska’s NRDs can successfully tailor policies to local contexts, particularly when supported by state-level guidance. However, the reliance on voluntary planning can lead to inconsistent levels of customization, raising questions about equity and effectiveness across districts.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Olivier, Tomás and Sechindra Vallury. 2024. “ Institutional Fit and Policy Design in Water Governance: Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (4): 809–832. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12550.

About the Authors

Tomás Olivier is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration and the Assistant Director of the Center for Policy Design and Governance at the Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Follow him on Bluesky: @tomasolivier.bsky.social

Sechindra Vallury is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy at the Odum School of Ecology and the Director for Policy at the River Basin Center, University of Georgia. 

Follow him on Bluesky: @sechindra.bsky.social


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Rethinking Policy Piloting: Managing Uncertainty in the Policy Process

by Sreeja Nair

As governments grapple with uncertainties associated with complex policy issues such as climate change, digital transformation, pandemics and Artificial Intelligence, the role of policy piloting and experimentation will be key in shaping policy choices. Designing policies as pilots and experiments “in theory” permits governments a safe space to test new and alternative policy designs and learn from them. There are, however, challenges in realizing the potential of pilots to do so in practice. In my book Rethinking Policy Piloting, I study design features of selected policy pilots that were launched to manage risk and uncertainty in the agriculture sector in India. Despite their technical merit, pilots—just as regular policies—are prone to political influences, which can alter their expected performance on implementation. This is then an interesting departure from a common sentiment, “When in doubt, just pilot.”

Drawing from literature on policy experimentation, scaling-up, and policy change, I develop a theoretical model with four conditions hypothesized to influence a pilot’s outcomes in terms of its policy translation. These conditions are 1) the pilot’s vision to scale-up, 2) stakeholders governing the pilot, 3) semblance of the pilot’s objectives and 4) semblance of the pilot’s instruments (to reach set objectives) to a policy it was designed to improve or replace. Thirteen policy pilots launched by the central Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of India to address risks and uncertainties in agriculture production were selected for a comparative case analysis. These pilots spread across 25 years starting from 1990—the decade that saw liberalization and decentralization reforms in India to 2015.

The pilots aimed at increasing crop productivity and reducing risks to agricultural production following a period of demonstration and evaluation and involved testing of different policy elements for guiding national agriculture policy. While some were intended to be incremental measures to support current policy programmes, others proposed new models and innovations to reform and replace the same. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with those involved in design and implementation or evaluation of the pilots. Thick case narratives along with a Qualitative Comparative Analysis helped understand how variations in the four conditions influenced the outcomes of each pilot.

The analysis reveals three key insights. First, pilots can survive in different forms without scaling-up fully and still contribute meaningfully to improved policy design. Second, successful design, implementation, and scaling up of pilots is not automatic and involves a tussle between its technical merit and political appeal. Pilots come with the risk of failure and associated reputational consequences to the policymaker and thus might often be conservative, proposing only marginal changes to current policies. Third, a departure from conservative pilots is seen when non-governmental actors are involved, which could be attributed to risk-sharing in case of failure.

Rethinking Policy Piloting makes an appeal to policymakers to experiment more considering these as opportunities to improve policy design, and to researchers to regulate their enthusiasm around expected outcomes from pilots considering the politics that surrounds them- just as routine policies.

About the Author

Sreeja Nair is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. She studies how governments manage risk and uncertainty in the policy process, focusing on the interplay of science and politics. Her research examines varied policy tools, in particular pilots and experimentation, for addressing high uncertainty in planning for climate change, sustainability transitions and digital transformation. Follow her on X/Twitter: @Sreeja_Nair01

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Policy Design Receptivity and Target Populations: A Social Construction Framework Approach to Climate Change Policy

by Chris Koski & Paul Manson

Climate change is by any definition a wicked problem with myriad potential policy tools and even more potential targets. Policymakers face difficult political choices when designing policies to combat climate change. Among these choices are who should bear the costs and benefits of various policy tool options. Policy tools can be carrots and sticks, and policymakers assign these differently based on who will receive either option. Previous attempts to address climate change at the federal level have largely relied on subsidies and guidance rather than rules and punishment. Winners in these choices have been those with power to influence outcomes.

Previous research on federal climate policy has sought to explain failure both in legislation and executive action. Why have efforts to establish a carbon market in the US failed?  What was the source of demise for the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (and can Biden breathe life into it)?  Public opinion research has focused on understanding support for climate policies, including very specific proposals (e.g. cap and trade). Missing from this work is the general answer to the question: How do policy design features influence public support for policy?

Our article “Policy Design Receptivity and Target Populations: A Social Construction Framework Approach to Climate Change Policy,” recently published in Policy Studies Journal, addresses this question. Our work is situated in the literature on policy deservingness and the resurgence of interest in the social construction of target populations framework.

Using a national survey experiment, we assessed support for seven policy tools across the four archetypal target populations built on Schneider and Ingram’s Policy Design for Democracy.  We find that climate policies are popular across all target populations. Contemporary federal climate policy focuses on carrots: de-emphasizing regulations, leveraging subsidies, and creating carve-outs for firms. In contrast, we find the public prefers sticks: policies that impose burdens – in our case, policies that mandate behaviors – for nearly all target populations, even the positively constructed groups who have power.  The public still supports subsidizing most populations, but not those viewed as undeserving.  Perhaps the most striking contrast between our findings and the federal policy discourse on climate change is that we find Americans are broadly hostile to giving groups exceptions to climate rules, a carrot they will not share with others.

Future work could consider a more complex, and realistic, view of policymaking, namely, that policies target bundles of populations with multiple tools. For example, the Biden administration has taken two distinct approaches to electric vehicle policies in the US, creating subsidies to purchase or lease EVs as well as proposing fuel economy standards that require automakers to increase fleet efficiency. Our current research and research we plan for the future hope to improve the relationship between design and public support for policy.

Editor’s Note: This article won the 2024 Theodore J. Lowi Policy Studies Journal Best Article Award. Congratulations to the authors!

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Koski, Chris and Paul Manson. 2024. “Policy Design Receptivity and Target Populations: A Social Construction Framework Approach to Climate Change Policy.” Policy Studies Journal, 52(2): 211–233. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12520.

About the Authors

Chris Koski is the Daniel B. Greenberg Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He is co-author of Means, Motives, and Opportunities: How Executives and Interest Groups Set Public Policy with Christian Breunig published by Cambridge University Press (2024).

Paul Manson is Assistant Research Professor with the Center for Public Service at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.

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Operationalizing social equity in public policy design: A comparative analysis of solar equity policies in the United States

by Shan Zhou, Xue Gao, Adam M. Wellstead, & Dong Min Kim

Concerns over climate change and the decreasing costs of clean energy in the United States have resulted in large public investment in alternative energy sources, such as solar power. While government officials have recently made widespread efforts to usher in this transition, public concern has emerged over social equity in government policies promoting solar energy. Evidence exists that low-income and minority communities are less likely to adopt rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems caused by cost barriers, information gaps, principal-agent issues, and income-targeted marketing by PV installers. Consequently, many recent policies promoting clean energy neglect distributional justice concerns or even increase inequities.

In response, different levels of government in the United States are taking action to address inequities through policy intervention. Despite these interventions being perceived as improvements over traditional alternative energy policies, a gap in the research exists surrounding how solar policies have been formulated and designed to incorporate equity concerns. This research addresses this gap by answering the following research question: How have social concerns about solar equity been incorporated in public policy design?

To answer this question, we constructed a nationwide dataset of solar equity policies, defined as policies and programs in the United States that promote equity in distributed solar deployment. The data set includes over 50 policies adopted across 24 states and Washington D.C. We then examined how justice and equity considerations manifested at three levels of policy design in practice, including macro-level policy goals, meso-level policy tools, and micro-level policy settings (i.e., target populations and eligibility criteria) and calibrations.

As illustrated in Figure 1, results suggest that policy actors attempt to address unequal distribution of benefits and costs regarding solar PV deployment, as issues of accessibility and affordability for diverse and disadvantaged groups are among the most common solar equity policy goals. Financial incentives that directly benefit disadvantaged groups and organizations serving underrepresented groups are the most common policy instrument utilized, and economic vulnerability (defined by income benchmarks) is often used to define target populations, but the benchmarks used varied over time and geographic area.

This research offers a valuable contribution by joining energy justice and public policy literature to provide a more detailed understanding of meaningful ways to analyze energy justice. It also confirms the argument of Curley et al. (2020) that policymakers use different types of tools to target different takers and advance different policy goals. Finally, it contributes to the policy design literature by applying Schneider and Ingram (1990) and Howlett and Cashore’s (2009) policy design elements to a comparative analysis of solar equity policies. Moreover, research findings in this paper can be particularly useful to policy actors interested in creating policies and programs that reduce solar inequities.

You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at

Zhou, Shan, Xue Gao, Adam M. Wellstead and Dong Min Kim. 2023. “Operationalizing social equity in public policy design: A comparative analysis of solar equity policies in the United States.” Policy Studies Journal 51 (4): 741–772. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12505.

About the Authors

Shan Zhou is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Purdue University. Her research interests focus on the intersection of public policy, social equity, and sustainability. She has extensive experience in analyzing the justice implications of clean energy policies and infrastructure development in both developed and developing countries (e.g., U.S. and China), using quantitative and qualitative research methods. She has also worked on policy design research promoting effective and equitable clean energy adoption.

Xue Gao is an Assistant Professor at the Askew School of Public Administration and Policy at Florida State University. Her research focuses on the interplay between policy, politics, technology, and society in the energy transition process. Her research encompasses various aspects of the energy transition, including the policy-making process, evaluation of energy programs, innovation and entrepreneurship in renewable energy, and energy justice. 

Adam M. Wellstead is a Professor of Public Policy with the Department of Social Sciences at Michigan Technological University. His research interests include policy innovation labs, policy capacity, policy design, and public value. 


Dane Kim is a PhD Candidate in Environmental and Energy Policy at Michigan Technological University. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Engineering and a Master of Science degree in Environmental Engineering, both from the University of Southern California. His research interests include energy transition, energy policy, air pollution, governance, and data analytic research methods.

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