An experimental study of the effect of budget favorability on the formation of pseudo-participation perceptions

Budget decision-makers are forced at times to assign budgets that deviate substantially from budget participants’ requests. In these instances, budget participants likely interpret their budgetary involvement as lacking influence and perhaps as pseudo-participative. This experimental study examined two situational factors that may affect perceptions of pseudo-participation: budget favorability (receiving a much better or much worse budget than requested) and disclosure of budget intention (the decision-maker discloses or does not disclose a preliminary budget before the budget decision, with the final budget exactly matching the preliminary budget). As hypothesized, budget participants had a self-serving tendency to discount pseudo-participation as the cause of low influence when they received a favorable budget. However, contrary to a hypothesized effect, budget participants did not have a self-serving tendency to inflate pseudo-participation as the cause of low influence when they received an unfavorable budget. Instead, they formed strong, unbiased pseudo-participation perceptions. Also contrary to a hypothesized effect, the budget decision-maker's disclosure of an intended budget, which should have provided clear indications of an insincere request for budget input, did not increase perceptions of pseudo-participation. Budget outcomes that indicate low influence may evoke such strong perceptions of pseudo-participation as to override other information that suggests pseudo-participation.