The Ron Swanson Effect: Disconnection in Attitudes towards Government & Sorting into Government

Last registered on May 18, 2026
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
The Ron Swanson Effect: Disconnection in Attitudes towards Government & Sorting into Government
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0018634
Initial registration date
May 14, 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
May 18, 2026, 7:29 AM EDT

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

Locations

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Primary Investigator

Name
Dasom Ham
Affiliation
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Jane Lawrence Sumner
PI Affiliation
University of South Carolina
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2026-05-20
End date
2026-05-22
Keywords
Governance, Labor
Additional Keywords
Government, public sector, attitudes toward government, political economy
JEL code(s)
J45, H83
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This study investigates whether living in US deindustrialized communities could lead to a disconnect in attitudes towards government and likelihood of applying to government. We hypothesize that individuals living in deindustrialized communities have negative attitudes towards government due to perceived first-hand experience interactions with government services. However, since government jobs are the last "off-shoreable" job in the labor market, we hypothesize, despite negative attitudes toward government, these individuals are more likely to apply to government jobs.

We set out to test the following RQs:

1. RQ1: Do people located in deindustrialized areas report a large gap between negative attitudes toward government and interest in government employment, all else equal?
2. RQ2: What are the effects of offering information on benefits of working in government on likelihood of applying for government job? Does this differ based on living in a deindustrialized area?

Our main outcomes are attitude towards local, state, and federal government itself and government jobs, whether would like to work at local, state, and federal government, and likelihood of applying to a local, state, and federal government job.

We will recruit 1500 US adults from Bovitz-Forthright, an online survey vendor. Our study will ask individuals about demographic characteristics, preference for non-wage amenities, attitudes towards local, state, and federal government itself and associated jobs, and whether would like to work for local, state, and federal government.

We will then take a subsample of respondents who have not worked at the government and randomly assign them to a treatment and control group. The treated group will receive an information intervention where they be given a list of selected benefits (or non-wage amenities) associated with government work. Then, we will compare the treatment and control group and conduct a heterogeneity analysis by individuals who lived in deindustrialized US counties vs. not exposed US counties.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Ham, Dasom and Jane Lawrence Sumner. 2026. "The Ron Swanson Effect: Disconnection in Attitudes towards Government & Sorting into Government." AEA RCT Registry. May 18. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.18634-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Individuals who have not worked in local, state, or federal government will be randomly assigned to treatment and control group. The treatment group will receive information about selected available non-wage amenities in the government jobs while the control group will receive a placebo information.
Intervention Start Date
2026-05-20
Intervention End Date
2026-05-22

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Likelihood of applying for local, state, and federal jobs

Attitude towards local, state, and federal government

Attitude/feeling towards local, state, and federal government work

Gap in whether would like to work and attitude/feeling towards local, state, and federal government

We will do heterogeneity by whether live in a de-industrialized community
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
See attached document for more details.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Selecting “Stability” and “health insurance” as one of three important non-wage amenities

Availability in job opportunities for past 12 months
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)
See attached document for more details.

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
We will recruit adults who live in the USA through an online survey, Qualtrics via data vendor, Bovitz-Forthright. The targeted sample size is 1500.

For our information intervention, we will restrict our sample to only individuals who are not current or former local, state, and federal government employees. We will randomly assign these individuals to (1) treatment group or (2) control group. The treatment arm will receive an information intervention (see details above).
Experimental Design Details
Not available
Randomization Method
Conditional on not working or have hard worked in government, randomization done via Qualtrics survey flow
Randomization Unit
Individual
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
See attached document for details on clustering standard errors.
Sample size: planned number of observations
We expect about 1500 respondents, so 1500 observations (or each respondent = an observation).
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Since we are conditioning on a sample of 1500, assuming 100 individuals reported currently or formerly working in the government, we expect the following:

For treatment arm, there will be approximately 700 respondents.
For control arm, there will be approximately 700 respondents.

However, we expect our sample size for each arm to be slightly smaller due to sample restriction after conditioning.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
University of Minnesota
IRB Approval Date
2026-05-11
IRB Approval Number
STUDY00028436
Analysis Plan

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