Replication Data for: Wealth and Strategic Misinformation in Digital Citizen-Government Interactions: Evidence from Municipal Petitions in China

Abstract of the Paper: While the dynamics of misinformation in new media contexts have been extensively studied, there is a conspicuous lack of research on this phenomenon within government digital platforms. This article addresses this gap by analyzing the impact of wealth on the generation of misinformation during citizen-government interactions. By matching administrative data from municipal service records with housing price data at the apartment complex level in downtown Shanghai, the analysis identifies a significant negative correlation between neighborhood wealth and the inclusion of misinformation in citizen petitions. Specifically, residents of socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods are substantially more likely to incorporate misinformation into their submissions compared to their wealthier counterparts. Furthermore, an examination of the heterogeneous effects of wealth across various petition categories and educational levels suggests that the observed pattern is driven by a strategic rather than a cognitive mechanism. Additionally, petitions containing misinformation elicit more exhaustive and protracted responses from government agencies.