Increasing Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Well-Being in Times of Crisis: A Survey Experiment With Two Social Belonging Interventions

Noortje de Boer; Carina Schott; Kim Loyens

doi:10.1177/0734371X241227899

Increasing Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Well-Being in Times of Crisis: A Survey Experiment With Two Social Belonging Interventions

Noortje de Boer, Carina Schott^*, Kim Loyens

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

This study increases our understanding on how to improve the well-being of street-level bureaucrats. We test the effect of social belonging interventions on street-level bureaucrats’ well-being in times of crisis. We argue stimulating social belonging is especially relevant during crises, because it mitigates identity threats caused by high levels of uncertainty and adversities. We conducted a pre-registered survey experiment during the Covid-19 pandemic among Belgian inspectors (n = 423). We find social belonging interventions have a small, positive effect (d = 0.26) on street-level bureaucrats’ work engagement but have no effect on street-level bureaucrats’ burnout. We outline directions for future research by discussing explanations for our (in)significant findings.

Original language	English
Journal	Review of Public Personnel Administration
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X241227899
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 9 Feb 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article: This research was funded by Social Intelligence and Investigation Service (SIOD), a Belgian agency that coordinates joint social fraud inspections by five national inspection agencies.

Funders	Funder number
SIOD
Social Intelligence and Investigation Service

Keywords

behavioral interventions
identity threat
social belonging
street-level bureaucrats
well-being

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10.1177/0734371X241227899Licence: CC BY

Cite this

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Increasing Street-Level Bureaucrats’ Well-Being in Times of Crisis: A Survey Experiment With Two Social Belonging Interventions

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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Keywords

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