The Effects of Program Information on Citizens’ Reputational Beliefs about Government and Health Insurance Enrollment: Evidence from a Field Experiment

It proposes a framework in which message-based informational nudges influence participation by making program-related information more salient, easier to process, and normatively meaningful, while also activating organization-directed evaluation.

The framework is tested during the transition from municipally to provincially coordinated Huimin Insurance in City A, Liaoning Province, China, a setting marked by institutional uncertainty and ambiguous reputational signals. A field experiment randomly assigned communities to a treatment group, which received a bundled informational intervention package, or to a control group, which received no intervention. Difference-in-Differences and causal mediation analyses show that informational nudges increased program-related knowledge, willingness to participate, and actual participation.