10.7910/DVN/6SHIKB Yu, Jinhai Jinhai Yu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8146-6093 University of Connecticut Nicolai Petrovsky Nicolai Petrovsky https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5134-8718 City University of Hong Kong Zhiwei Zhang Kansas State University Josephine Gatti Schafer Josephine Gatti Schafer University of Nebraska at Omaha Harvard Dataverse 2025 Social Sciences Public reporting; financial reporting; transparency; accountability; survey experiment Yu, Jinhai Jinhai Yu University of Connecticut 2025-04-29 2025-04-29 18481 161904 application/x-stata-syntax text/tab-separated-values 1.0 Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. How can governments best report information to the public to enhance transparency and accountability? We address this question in the context of government financial reporting. Traditional financial reporting is widely considered technical and inaccessible to the public. In contrast, popular financial reporting is viewed as an accessible solution. As a result, we expect popular financial reporting to increase three outcomes relative to traditional financial reporting: recipients’ understanding, interest, and trust in government financial information. We conducted a pre-registered online survey experiment with Amazon Mechanical Turk using Cloud Research to compare subject responses to a Popular Annual Financial Report (a user-friendly format) and an Annual Comprehensive Financial Report (a traditional, technical format). The Popular Annual Financial Report causes an increase in understanding, interest, and trust in government financial information. The effects on interest and trust are larger for those who felt more informed about government budgets, voted for Donald Trump in 2020, and were more educated.