Public perceptions of government has long been shaped by service outcomes. Roads that remain full of potholes, water systems that suffer failures, or neglected green spaces often dominate headlines and public opinion. Yet new research suggests that what citizens see behind the scenes of public service delivery may also shape how they perceive government performance—not just the service outcomes themselves. A recent study by Hung-Yi Hsu from Rutgers University, Newark, published in Public Management Review, explores whether revealing the internal operations of public services can change how citizens think of government performance.
The article, titled “Operational transparency and satisfaction with public services”, examines a concept borrowed from business management known as operational transparency. In business settings, this approach has been shown to improve customer satisfaction by allowing consumers to see how products are made or services are delivered. Hsu’s research asks whether the same logic applies to government services and whether transparency about public sector operations can improve citizen satisfaction.
Using large-scale survey experiments involving more than 4,400 participants across the United States, the study offers one of the most comprehensive empirical examinations of operational transparency in the public sector to date. The findings reveal that transparency can improve public satisfaction, but only under specific conditions.
The key insight: transparency is highly context-dependent, and understanding when it helps versus when it doesn’t can improve how government communicates with the public.
What operational transparency really means in public services
Operational transparency refers to the disclosure of information about the processes, activities, and internal workflows involved in delivering a service. Unlike traditional government transparency, which often focuses on political decision-making or policy outcomes, operational transparency shifts attention to day-to-day service delivery.
In the private sector, this approach has become common. Customers can track parcels in real time, watch food being prepared in open kitchens, or monitor progress indicators on digital platforms. These practices create a sense of visibility and perceived effort, which influence customer attitudes.
Hsu applies this concept to government services by examining whether citizens respond positively when they are shown how public services are produced. In the experiments, participants were presented with realistic service descriptions that either included operational details or omitted them entirely. The operational transparency treatments described concrete actions, such as routine road inspections, water quality testing, and street tree maintenance.
Inside the experiment: How public perception was tested
The study used four independent survey experiments focused on three common public services: road maintenance, drinking water provision, and street tree care. Each experiment randomly assigned participants to scenarios with or without operational transparency and with positive or negative service outcomes. This experimental design allowed researchers to isolate the effect of operational transparency and understand how such effect might vary across different service outcome conditions.
For road maintenance, participants were told whether their local roads performed better or worse than neighbouring towns. Some participants also received detailed operational information, including the frequency of pothole monitoring and repair response times. For water services, operational transparency focused on water treatment procedures and regulatory testing. For street trees, participants were informed about routine maintenance activities including inspections, pruning and disease treatment.
Across all studies, participants rated their satisfaction with the service. Additional measures examined perceived effort and understanding of government operations.
Where transparency works best
The most striking results emerged in the road maintenance experiments. When participants were shown operational details such as routine inspections and rapid response times, satisfaction levels increased significantly. This effect appeared regardless of whether the overall service outcome was positive or negative.
Even when roads were described as performing worse than those in neighbouring areas, operational transparency mitigated dissatisfaction. Participants reported less dissatisfaction when they knew crews were actively monitoring streets and quickly addressing potholes.
To further examine how the level of detail in operational information might matter, an advanced experiment with three groups was conducted. One group received highly detailed information, including quantitative indicators such as monitoring frequency and response time. Another group received only basic operational descriptions without numbers. A third group received general service access information, such as how to report potholes.
The results showed that detailed operational transparency produced the strongest improvements in satisfaction. Basic descriptions still had a positive effect, but it was weaker. General service information had little impact. This suggests that citizens respond not just to transparency, but also to the specificity of the information provided.
Operational transparency has the potential to give more weight and credit to excellent government performance and to counterbalance excessive negativity in citizen judgement.
– Hung-Yi
When transparency fails to move public opinion
While road maintenance showed strong results, the same pattern did not appear in other service areas. For drinking water provision and street tree maintenance, operational transparency had little to no statistically significant effect on citizen satisfaction.
In the water service experiments, participants were informed about disinfection processes, contaminant testing, and regulatory compliance. Despite this technical detail, satisfaction levels remained largely unchanged. The same was true for street tree care, where routine maintenance activities failed to generate meaningful improvements in public perception.
Hsu suggests several reasons for this difference. Water services are highly regulated and technically complex. For many citizens, operational details about chemical treatment or compliance standards may be difficult to interpret or emotionally distant from everyday experience. Rather than signalling effort, such transparency may simply reinforce the perception that regulation is expected rather than exceptional.
Street tree maintenance presents a different challenge. Unlike pothole repairs, which are visible and time sensitive, tree care operates on longer maintenance cycles. The absence of urgency may reduce the impact of operational disclosure.
Why service outcomes aren't the whole story: the role of effort perception
One of the most important insights from the study concerns perceived effort. Follow-up mediation analyses revealed that improvements in citizen satisfaction were driven largely by changes in how much effort people believed the government was investing.
This effect aligns with psychological research known as the effort heuristic. People tend to associate visible effort with higher quality, even when objective outcomes remain unchanged. When citizens see that crews are working frequently, responding quickly, and actively monitoring infrastructure, they infer commitment and competence.
Operational transparency strengthens this perception by making invisible labour visible. It also helps citizens connect service outcomes to concrete government actions, creating a clearer causal narrative between public spending and service delivery.
This mechanism explains why transparency was particularly effective in road maintenance. Pothole repairs offer tangible examples of effort translating directly into visible improvements. Citizens can imagine the work involved and recognise its immediate impact.
Reference
Hsu, H. Y. (2025). Operational transparency and satisfaction with public services. Public Management Review. https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2025.2507953
