Municipal Responsiveness to Email Inquiries in Germany: An Email Correspondence Experiment on Requests about School Support Aides for Children with Special Educational Needs versus Parking Permits and Name-Based Differences in Responses.

This study investigates how German municipalities respond to citizen email inquiries and whether responses differ by request type and sender characteristics. The study uses a randomized email correspondence design in which municipalities receive standardized messages requesting information either on applying for a school support aide (“Integrationshelfer”) for a child with formally assessed special educational needs or on applying for a parking permit. Sender names are randomly varied to signal a German-sounding versus Arabic-sounding name, and sender gender is also varied. Outcomes include whether municipalities respond, the helpfulness of responses (measured on a five-point scale), and whether replies include follow-up questions or requests for additional documents. For the school support aide inquiry, the study additionally records whether replies use relevant technical terminology related to special educational needs and whether they suggest telephone contact or a call-back. Comparing outcomes across request types and sender signals allows the study to assess whether access to administrative information and service quality vary systematically with the perceived background or gender of the requester and whether such patterns differ between education-related support and administrative permit requests.