Reward exploitation or exploration? The effects of local government sustainability strategies and performance information on citizen evaluation

Wenhui Li, Heewon Lee, Yixin Liu, Tian Tang and Guimin Zheng

Public Management Review, 2025, vol. 27, issue 12, 3057-3078

Abstract: Given the growing attention on citizen involvement in local sustainability, this study explores how citizens evaluate government sustainability performance stemming from exploitation (established policies) and exploration strategies (pioneering initiatives). Our survey experiment finds that positive sustainability performance resulting from exploitation achieves more favourable citizen evaluations compared to exploration. Negative sustainability performance does not moderate the associations between sustainability strategies and public assessments. Furthermore, Republicans, individuals with low climate beliefs, Hispanics, and low-income citizens prefer exploitation over exploration. As an early attempt to examine citizen preferences for organizational strategies, this study extends performance management research by linking organizational strategies with performance.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2024.2399147

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