Enhancing Citizen-Government Communication with AI: Evaluating the Impact of AI-Assisted Interactions on Communication Quality and Satisfaction

TL;DR

This study examines how AI-assisted communication affects the quality and satisfaction of government-citizen interactions, finding that AI improves clarity, politeness, and trust, with nuanced effects on emotional expression.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on AI's impact on communication quality in government settings, integrating relational theories with AI scholarship.

Findings

AI enhances informational-cognitive quality (clarity, ease of response)

AI improves expressive-constitutive quality (politeness, respect, trust, empathy)

No consistent evidence of increased urgency or emotional cues

Abstract

This study integrates critical AI scholarship with relational communication theories to explain how AI language modifications shape the quality of government-citizen communication. Distinguishing between informational-cognitive quality (clarity, ease of response) and expressive-constitutive quality (politeness, respectfulness, feeling heard, trust, urgency, empathy), we hypothesize that AI yields uncontested benefits for the former but contested effects for the latter, potentially enhancing relational markers while muting authentic emotional cues. Using a vignette-based survey with 220 citizens and 214 civil servants in China, we assess perceptions across five interaction contexts: service requests, policy inquiries, complaints, suggestions, and emergencies. Results from paired t-tests and mixed-effects regressions support the claim that AI enhances both informational-cognitive and expressive-constitutive quality from the perspectives of citizens and civil servants, with significant improvements in clarity, politeness, satisfaction, trust, and empathy, but provide no consistent evidence of urgency or empathy signals. These findings suggest that concerns over algorithmic emotional flattening may be overstated or context-specific; they offer theoretical insights into AI-mediated public interactions and practical implications for fostering trust and efficiency in digital governance.