THE CREDIBILITY OF GOVERNMENT PERFORMANCE REPORTING An Experimental Test

Local governments in the United States have been moving toward more open and complete reporting of their performance, yet many citizens remain broadly distrustful of government. Do citizens believe government-issued performance reports? To answer this question, an online survey experiment was conducted in which respondents were shown a basic performance report (on street cleanliness) stated to be from either the mayor, the sanitation department, an independent nonprofit institute, or no named source. A test of the extent to which participants believed the report found no significant differences regardless of its putative source. This suggests that citizens find basic performance information credible even when a local government is reporting on itself.