Prioritizing Along Prototypes: Implicit Citizenship Theories in Decision-Making at the Frontline

Public employees are expected to treat all citizens alike but due to scarce resources and increasing demands, they often simplify their decisions and prioritize, which carries the risk of discrimination. This study shifts attention to the taxonomy of categories that public employees freely associate with citizens (i.e., implicit citizenship theories) and explores how frontline employees prioritize clients whose characteristics correspond to six prototypes of citizens. The results of a choice-based conjoint experiment show that citizens' compliance with employees' implicit theories is indeed relevant to their decisions on granting benefits and imposing obligations. Regardless of whether the decision has these positive or negative consequences for citizens, a negative prototype (i.e., determination) is most influential, suggesting that employees prioritize citizens to their convenience. Overall, the study advances the socio-cognitive foundations of state-citizen interactions by framing those encounters as multi-category decision-making settings emerging from employees' everyday theories about citizens.