The importance of effectiveness versus transparency and stakeholder involvement in citizens’ perception of public sector algorithms

This paper sheds light on how much citizens value different features of public sector algorithms, specifically whether they prioritize effectiveness over transparency and stakeholder involvement in algorithm design or instead see effectiveness as less important. It does so with choice-based conjoint designs that present variants of algorithms used in policing and health care to respondents from representative German samples. Two studies with overall more than 3000 participants show that people are ready to trade away transparency and stakeholder involvement for small effectiveness gains. Citizens thus seem unlikely to demand accountable algorithms even in sensitive areas like policing and health care.