My research examines how public institutions determine who gains security, who bears risk, and who is expected to adapt when policies are difficult to navigate or implement. I am particularly interested in the gap between what policies formally promise and what people can actually access in practice.

A core theme across my work is that behavior often interpreted as individual preference or failure may instead reflect adaptation to institutional conditions. Citizens may forgo benefits when programs are difficult to navigate; landlords and intermediaries may avoid participation when policies expose them to financial or administrative risk; households may postpone major life decisions under conditions of housing insecurity; and communities may resist redistributive policies when they perceive threats to their own assets or status.

My research asks how these responses emerge, how they affect policy implementation, and whether better institutional design can reduce unnecessary insecurity and the burden placed on individuals to make public policies work.

Housing is the primary empirical focus of my research, as I believe it is both a fundamental source of security and dignity and a major site of market exchange, welfare provision, and social inequality.

I study how housing policies move from formal design to actual access. My work spans supply-side public housing and demand-side programs such as the U.S. Housing Choice Voucher Program and South Korea’s LH Jeonse Rental Housing Program. I examine how landlords, real estate intermediaries, policy recipients, and communities respond to policy rules, perceived risks, market conditions, and social stigma.

A central distinction in this work is between formal entitlement and effective access. Households may qualify for assistance but remain unable to secure housing because of landlord refusal, intermediary gatekeeping, administrative complexity, market constraints, or neighborhood opposition. My research examines where these barriers arise and how institutional design influences the behavior of the actors who ultimately determine whether housing policy works in practice.

• Cho, S.*, & Lucio, J. (2026). Economic crisis and landlord discussion on housing vouchers. In Y. Kim (Ed.), Computational Approaches to Policy Challenges (pp. 61–86). World Scientific. DOI: 10.1142/9789819826698_0004

• Lucio & Cho, S.*, J. (2025). “Can I (still) refuse housing vouchers? Source of income protections and landlord strategies.” Journal of Urban Affairs, 1-16. DOI: 10.1080/07352166.2025.2520244

• Cho, S. & Lucio, J.* (2025). “Vouchers Welcome Here: Source of Income Antidiscrimination Laws in American Cities.” Housing Policy Debate, 35(6), 917-937. DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2025.2490034

• Cho, S.* “Convergence and Divergence in Landlord Responses to Demand-Side Housing Policies: Comparative Analysis of the US and Korea.” Revise & Resubmit.

My research on digital governance examines technology as part of institutional design, rather than simply as a tool for administrative efficiency.

Digital systems can reduce information costs, simplify procedures, improve coordination, and make public programs easier to access. At the same time, technological change can shift administrative work, uncertainty, or risk from one actor to another. I therefore examine not only whether governments adopt new technologies, but also how digitalization changes the relationship between public institutions, citizens, frontline workers, and intermediaries.

My work in this area includes AI implementation in government, public data infrastructures, digital public engagement, administrative simplification, and online rental platforms. Across these projects, I ask whether technological innovation actually reduces the burden of interacting with public institutions or instead shifts that burden to different actors within the policy system.

• ​Cho, S.*, Hur, J. Y., & Kim, D. (2025). “Bridging trust in AI and its adoption: The role of organizational support in AI chatbot implementation in Korean government agencies.” Government Information Quarterly, 42(4), 102081. DOI: 10.1016/j.giq.2025.102081

• Mossberger, K.*, Cho, S., Cheong, P. H., & Kuznetsova, D. (2023). “The public good and public attitudes toward data sharing through IoT.” Policy & Internet, 15(3), 370-396. DOI: 10.1002/poi3.343

• Cho, S.*, Mossberger, K., Swindell, D., & Selby, J. D. (2021). “Experimenting with public engagement platforms in local government.” Urban Affairs Review, 57(3), 763-793. DOI: 10.1177/1078087419897821

• Brown, A., Mossberger, K., & Cho, S. (2020). “Race, place and digital governance.” in Meier, K. & Rutherfold, A. (eds.), Race and Public Administration (pp. 98-118). Routledge.​ DOI: 10.4324/9781003017639-5

• Schartman-Cycyk, S., Mossberger, K., Callahan, B., Novak, S., Sheon, A., Siefer, A., Mancinas, E., & Cho, S. (2019). “Connecting Cuyahoga: Investment in Digital Inclusion Brings Big Returns for Residents and Administration.” Connected Insights.

My current projects develop three connected parts of this research program: how insecurity affects behavior and social relations, how implementation actors control access to public policy, and whether institutional and digital redesign can reduce the burdens that prevent policies from working as intended.

Security, Social Relations, and Policy Attitudes This stream examines how housing insecurity and dependence on housing assets affect major life decisions, stigma, social integration, and public responses to redistributive policy.

• Lived Housing Difficulties and Fertility Intentions: How housing difficulties influence fertility intentions and family formation in China (with Chen Zhang)

• Social Mix in East Asia: Governance, stigma, and social integration in mixed communities (with DKU undergraduate research assistants; supported by DKU’s SRS program)

• Interpersonal versus Territorial Stigma: Not Because of You, But Because of Place: Interpersonal and territorial stigma in public housing opposition in South Korea (with Jaein Lee)

• Asset Protection and the Attitude-Behavior Gap: How housing insecurity and dependence on housing wealth contribute to support for public housing in principle but opposition in practice (with Jaein Lee)

• Public Housing Appearance and Policy Acceptance: Whether housing design affects perceptions of residents and support for public housing

Implementation, Landlords, and Intermediary Gatekeeping This stream examines the actors who stand between formal policy design and actual access, with particular attention to perceived risk, voluntary participation, and intermediary discretion.

• Cross-National Landlord Responses: Landlord responses to demand-side housing policies in the U.S. and South Korea

• Intermediary Gatekeeping: Real estate agents as quasi-intermediaries in South Korea’s demand-side housing programs

• Landlord Participation and Market Conditions: How rental-market conditions and institutional arrangements alter the perceived costs and benefits of participation

• Policy Adaptation and Screening: How landlords respond strategically to regulation, including source-of-income antidiscrimination protections

Digital Housing Policy and Administrative Simplification This stream examines whether digitalization and administrative redesign improve access to housing programs and how digital market infrastructures affect housing opportunities.

• Administrative Simplification: Does simplifying public housing applications increase take-up intentions?

• Digital Simplification and Actual Take-Up: Do simpler procedures lead to higher application rates in administrative data?

• Digital Risk Reconfiguration: How digitalization changes who bears administrative burden and risk among agencies, intermediaries, and policy recipients

• Online Rental Platforms and Market Segmentation: Digital platforms and housing market segmentation in South Korea (with Chen Zhang; supported by DKU DIRC’s Data+X program)

• Spatial Sorting: Spatial patterns in rental listings and the role of urban form in high-density cities (with Chen Zhang; supported by DKU DIRC’s Data+X program)

Security and the Burden of Adaptation My research asks how much adaptation public institutions demand from citizens and other policy actors, who bears the costs of that adaptation, and whether those demands could be reduced through better policy design. This goes beyond administrative burden in the conventional sense to include the financial risks, uncertainty, behavioral adjustments, and social costs that institutional arrangements impose on citizens, landlords, intermediaries, and communities.

Actor-Centered Policy Implementation and Effective Access Implementation research has largely focused on government agencies, street-level bureaucrats, or policy recipients, while housing research has often treated landlord behavior, community opposition, and intermediary roles as separate topics. My research brings these actors into a common framework and examines how their combined decisions determine whether formal eligibility becomes effective access.

Behavioral and Sociopsychological Approaches to Public Policy My work combines institutional analysis with concepts including risk perception, stigma, trust, asset protection, administrative burden, loss aversion, and the attitude-behavior gap. The aim is not to replace structural explanations with psychology, but to understand how institutional arrangements are interpreted and translated into behavior by the people who encounter them.

From Individual Security to Societal Values My research treats security not only as a policy outcome but also as a condition that can influence behavior, social relations, and broader values. Beginning with my earlier work on welfare institutions and post-materialism, I examine how insecurity may encourage risk avoidance and self-protection, while greater security may allow greater scope for inclusion, solidarity, and longer-term life choices.

Comparative Institutional Analysis Cross-national comparison is a consistent feature of my research. By studying similar policy problems across different legal, administrative, market, and welfare systems, particularly in the United States and East Asia, I use institutional variation to distinguish recurring behavioral mechanisms from responses produced by specific policy environments.

Digital Governance as Institutional Design My research connects digital governance with policy implementation by examining how technology changes who has access to information, who exercises discretion, who performs administrative work, and who bears risk. Rather than assuming that digitalization automatically improves access, I examine who benefits from simplification, who takes on new responsibilities, and whether technology actually makes public programs easier to use.

Mixed Methods and Novel Data Sources My research uses survey experiments, administrative records, stakeholder interviews, online forum data, online rental listings, and computational text analysis. These methods are particularly useful for studying actors such as landlords, intermediaries, and opposing community members whose perceptions and strategies can be difficult to observe through conventional administrative data or surveys.

• Cho, S. & Hayter, C.* (2020). “Under Pressure: A systematic review of stress and its impact among graduate students.” Science and Public Policy, 47(6), 758-771. DOI: 10.1093/scipol/scaa053

• Darnall, N., Welch, E, & Cho, S. 2019. “Sustainable supply chains and regulatory policy.” in Sarkis, J. (ed.), Handbook on the Sustainable Supply Chain (pp. 513–525). Edward Elgar. DOI: 10.4337/97817864342

• Cho, S. & Yoon, I-J.* 2015. “The international comparison of post-materialism: The effects of welfare characteristics and individual security.” Development and Society, 44(3): 495-533. DOI:10.21588/dns.2015.44.3.006