Research report: Citizen perceptions of regulatory instruments and enforcement styles

Abstract

This report presents the data collection and preliminary analysis of the twelve focus groups on citizens’ trust in regulation, conducted as part of the TiGRE work package WP5 which focuses on regulatory instruments and enforcement styles of regulatory agencies and how they affect citizen trust in regulatory regimes. The focus groups explore citizens’ views on what constitutes a trustworthy regulator, perceptions regarding the trustworthiness of the food safety regulator, and citizens’ evaluations of particular enforcement styles in six countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, and Norway. This data collection effort builds on the previous work in WP5, specifically, the survey experiment reported in the deliverable D5.21 , and aims to provide further insights on how citizens’ trust in regulatory agencies is shaped by the behaviours of the regulators. In this report we first discuss the rationale of the focus groups, the data collection approach, and the structure of the focus group discussions. We then present six country reports, which provide summaries of the focus group discussions in each of the six countries. Finally, we provide a preliminary comparative analysis, outlining the similarities and differences emerging from the country reports, and discuss their implications. The results show that citizens consider transparency, integrity, and expertise to be the key traits of a trustworthy regulator. The knowledge of citizens regarding the work of the food safety regulator in their country is rather limited, however, this does not appear to prevent them from placing high levels of trust in its work. When it comes to specific enforcement styles, it does not appear that they have a direct effect on citizens’ trust. What citizens consider to be an appropriate regulatory action in a given situation, would largely depend on the specifics of the situation