Picture yourself scrolling through job listings for a teaching, nursing, or social work position. One offers a permanent contract at modest pay. Another dangles a higher salary but only a temporary gig. A third promises you’ll be working for an organization committed to fairness and integrity. Which would you pick?
That question sits at the heart of a practical problem governments around the world are wrestling with: how to fill positions that provide public services when qualified candidates have plenty of options. A team of researchers set out to untangle which job features actually pull people in, and whether a sense of mission changes what candidates want. Their findings, published in Public Management Review, show that citizens want it all, stable contracts, solid pay, and employers guided by public values, but that a person’s motivation to serve society shifts the weight placed on one particular feature.
The question behind the research
Earlier studies on why people pursue public service work tended to examine pieces of the puzzle separately. One paper might look at salary. Another at job security. A third at whether applicants are drawn to the public sector itself. But in real life, job hunters weigh all of these things together, trading one against another.
Guillem Ripoll of the University of Navarra and his colleagues from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Utrecht University wanted to examine these factors at the same time. They also wanted to address a longstanding puzzle in the field: the role of public service motivation, often shortened to PSM. PSM refers to a person’s drive to contribute to society and serve the public interest, something that can show up in employees of any sector, not just government.
Researchers have long suspected that people high in PSM are drawn to government jobs. But the evidence has been mixed, and it has not been clear exactly what these mission-driven individuals respond to. Is it the government paycheck? The type of work? Or something more symbolic, like the values an organization stands for?
Splitting job features into two types
To make sense of the different pulls a job exerts, the team relied on a distinction from marketing and branding research. Some job features are instrumental, meaning they are concrete and practical: salary, contract type, employer sector, the actual tasks performed. These attract people by offering measurable benefits.
Other features are symbolic, reflecting what an organization stands for and the identity a job conveys to others. An employer’s commitment to values like impartiality or legality falls into this category. Symbolic features attract candidates whose self-image aligns with those values.
The researchers hypothesized that PSM, understood as a kind of social identity, would amplify the appeal of symbolic features but leave the appeal of practical features untouched.
How the experiment worked
To test this, the team ran what’s called a conjoint experiment, a survey method borrowed from marketing research. It works by showing people pairs of hypothetical options that vary on several features at once, then asking them to choose one. By comparing many such choices, researchers can isolate how much each individual feature sways decisions.
The team surveyed 1,316 residents of Catalonia, Spain, through an online panel in 2019. Before the choice tasks began, participants answered four questions measuring their PSM, such as how motivated they were to contribute to society.
Then came the main task. Each respondent saw three pairs of job offers for public service positions like doctor, teacher, social worker, or administrative staff. Every offer varied on five features:
- Sector (public, private, or non-profit)
- Organizational values (public values like impartiality, incorruptibility, and legality, versus private values like innovation, competitiveness, and profit)
- Monthly salary (1,200, 1,800, or 2,400 euros)
- Contract type (permanent or temporary)
- Type of task (direct interaction with users, planning and analysis, or management)
The salary figures were anchored to real Spanish wage distributions at the time, with 1,200 euros near the minimum wage, 1,800 close to the national average, and 2,400 above average.
What citizens preferred
The results painted a clear picture. Job security mattered most of all. When a job came with a permanent rather than temporary contract, respondents were 41 percent more likely to pick it, a larger effect than any other feature in the study.
Salary came next. Moving from 1,200 to 1,800 euros boosted the chance of being selected by 14 percent, and jumping to 2,400 euros raised it by 21 percent. Notice the pattern: each additional bump in pay added less appeal than the previous one.
Public values had a substantial pull as well. Jobs at organizations guided by public values like impartiality and legality were 21 percent more likely to be chosen than those at organizations guided by private values like profit and competitiveness.
The public sector held a slight edge over private and non-profit employers, with roughly a 4 to 5 percent advantage. The type of task, whether it involved direct contact with the public or behind-the-scenes planning, did not meaningfully sway choices one way or the other.
Where public service motivation made a difference
The interesting twist came when the researchers looked at how PSM reshaped preferences. For people with very low PSM, an organization’s public values barely registered. But as PSM rose, the pull of public values grew stronger. Among those with the highest PSM scores, public values increased the likelihood of choosing a job by 28 percent, making this feature nearly as influential as contract stability.
Here’s what PSM did not do: it did not dampen the appeal of a fat paycheck or a permanent contract. People high in PSM wanted stability and decent pay just as much as everyone else. They simply layered an additional concern on top, caring intensely about what their employer stood for.
As the authors put it, “PSM does not interact with instrumental attributes, and one cannot use PSM to compensate for the lack of instrumental attributes.”
What this means for employers
For organizations trying to recruit into public service roles, the findings suggest a few practical steps. Playing up job stability and competitive pay remains essential, since these are the strongest draws for candidates across the board. Assuming people will simply associate security and fair pay with the public sector, rather than spelling it out, leaves recruitment potential on the table.
For drawing in mission-driven candidates, messaging about an organization’s values matters. The familiar label “public service” may not be enough. Spelling out specific commitments to fairness, integrity, or legality can speak directly to candidates whose sense of self is tied up with serving the broader good.
A few caveats are worth noting. The study was conducted in Spain, a country with a career-based public employment system and a labor market shaped by the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Results could differ in countries where public services are organized differently or where workers face different economic pressures. Experiments also put participants in somewhat artificial situations, asking them to decide quickly on limited information. Real job searches involve more back-and-forth, more discussion, and more time to weigh options. Still, the findings offer a grounded look at which signals pull candidates in during the earliest stage of looking for work.
