BIO

Skyler is a second-year undergraduate honors student who plans to graduate in the Spring of 2023 with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Criminology then pursue a Masters Degree in Applied Behavior Analysis. Her research interests span psychology, sociology, and criminology. She is CITI certified in Human Subjects research and is experienced in Microsoft SPSS statistical software and Qualtrics Survey Software. She currently is a research intern in a sociology lab studying the influence of The Bystander Effect on citizen co-production. She plans to combine her love of psychology and criminology by pursuing a career in criminal profiling.

The Others Will Help: Citizen Coproduction and Bystander Apathy

Abstract

In an effort to increase co-production and find ways to lessen the power of
the bystander effect, we conducted an online experiment and collected data from our surveys asking participants to choose which ways they would react to particular emergency scenarios. H1 posits that if a situation is interpreted as more urgent, a citizen is more likely to co-produce. H2 proposes that co- production increases as the amount of bystanders decreases as a result of increased personal responsibility.
Our research did find that the urgency and risk of each situation positively influenced co-production, supporting H1. However, our research did not support H2 and we found no influence on our results due to the bystander effect. Our findings also showed that unclear information (clear messages and instructions rather than “unknown” information help citizens engage in co-production) and high amounts of effort and costs required from the participants negatively impacted co-production.
By understanding what lessens the likelihood for an individual to co- produce, there is an opportunity to apply that information to public policy and public safety protocols in a way that might increase co-production as a whole.

Keywords: Co-production, Bystander Effect, Help