Information, Service Delivery, and Citizen Engagement: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in San Diego

Last registered on September 16, 2026

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Information, Service Delivery, and Citizen Engagement: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in San Diego

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0017630

Initial registration date

January 10, 2026

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

January 12, 2026, 8:18 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated

September 16, 2026, 8:56 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name

David Schonholzer

Affiliation

University of Southern California, Economics Department

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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Benjamin Vatter

PI Affiliation

MIT Sloan School of Business

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PI Name

Yifei Wang

PI Affiliation

University of Southern California, Economics Department

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Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2026-01-10

End date

2026-11-30

Keywords

Governance, Welfare

Additional Keywords

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

This study tests whether (a) providing residents with an informational door‑hanger about the City of San Diego’s 311 “Get‑It‑Done” (GID) system and (b) recent visible service delivery (a recent pothole repair on a resident’s street) change knowledge, attitudes, and City services requesting behavior. We will randomize street segments to receive door‑hangers and conduct door‑to‑door surveys on a weekly basis. The study population is City‑maintained residential street segments, focusing on single‑family homes, with coverage across all nine Council Districts over the course of about seven months. Primary outcomes are survey measures (GID knowledge and perceptions) and administrative behaviors (subsequent GID requests). Analyses compare door‑hanger vs control and recent‑fix segments vs unfixed controls, using regression adjustment with baseline request rates. The survey is cross‑sectional (one contact per household); behavioral follow‑up relies on administrative data observed up to several months after fieldwork.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Schonholzer, David, Benjamin Vatter and Yifei Wang. 2026. "Information, Service Delivery, and Citizen Engagement: Evidence from a Randomized Trial in San Diego." AEA RCT Registry. September 16. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.17630-1.1

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Door Hanger (DH): In selected weekly bundles of street segments, segments are randomized to (i) Full-DH (all addresses on segment receive a door hanger), (ii) Partial-DH (exactly half of addresses on segment receive a door hanger), or (iii) Control-DH (no addresses receive door hangers). Door hangers provide instructions and a QR/URL for using San Diego’s Get-It-Done (GID) system.

Door-to-Door Survey (D2DS): Starting in week 2, a subset of bundles are selected for an in-person survey of adult residents to measure service beliefs, GID awareness/usage, and pothole-related perceptions. Four of six weekly D2DS bundles are drawn from the prior week’s DH bundles and two are drawn from bundles without DH but with recent pothole reports.

Pothole Fix (PF): Not randomized. We construct PF(x) indicators for whether pothole reports are fixed within x∈{1,…,7} days. For identification, we exploit standardized pothole crew allocation mechanisms by the Transportation Department.

Reporting Incentive (RI), added after initial registration (proposed to the City January 14, 2026, approved January 23, 2026; in the survey instrument from February 21, 2026): at the end of the D2DS interview each respondent receives a business card with a QR code to a study landing page and a printed reward amount pre-assigned to the address: with probability 1/2 no amount ($0 placebo), with probability 1/2 an amount of $5, $10, $15 or $20 (1/8 each). The reward is paid if the respondent submits a pothole report through GID within 60 days and the City closes the case within 60 days.

Intervention Start Date

2026-01-10

Intervention End Date

2026-08-22

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Administrative (segment-level, from GID):
- weekly counts/indicators of pothole service requests
- weekly counts/indicators of non-pothole service requests
- weekly counts/indicators of any service requests
Also cumulative outcomes at 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months after treatment week.

Survey (D2DS):
- General views of City services
- Overall satisfaction with City services; perceived efficiency and fairness in the use of tax dollars.
- Awareness of the GID app/website; prior use of GID for any services; reasons for non-use.
- Whether respondents have noticed potholes on their street or nearby; whether they have noticed recent pothole repairs.
- Perceived costs and policy preferences related to potholes
- Perceived disruption from potholes; support for hypothetical tax increases earmarked for faster pothole repairs.
- Expected time to repair potholes with and without citizen reporting.
- Perceptions of how many neighbors notice potholes, know about GID, and would report potholes.
- How respondents typically travel around the city and time spent on city roads.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

This study is a field experiment in the City of San Diego evaluating how information provision affects citizen engagement with municipal services. Street segments are randomly assigned to receive different levels of exposure to an informational door hanger about the City’s service request system, including a control condition with no door hanger.

Outcomes are measured using administrative data on service requests aggregated at the street-segment level and, for a subset of locations, survey responses measuring beliefs and perceptions about City services. Pothole repairs themselves are not randomized and are analyzed using observed variation in repair timing.

A pilot was conducted prior to the study and is excluded from the analysis.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Randomization done in office by a computer.

Randomization Unit

Door-hanger treatment is randomized at the street-segment level within selected geographic bundles of segments. Door-to-door survey (D2DS) locations are selected at the bundle level.

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

N/A

Sample size: planned number of observations

Administrative outcomes: ~13,000 eligible street segments (segment-week panel), of which ~1,500–2,000 segments are expected to be sampled into door-hanger field operations over the study period. Survey outcomes: ~1,400 responding households (door-to-door survey).

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Door-hanger randomization (street segments): 50% Control-DH, 25% Partial-DH, 25% Full-DH (shares of sampled segments).
Reporting-incentive randomization (D2DS respondents, from February 21, 2026): 50% $0 placebo, 12.5% each $5, $10, $15, $20.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB