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jppm-theory-development

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Use when building the conceptual backbone of a Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (JPP&M) manuscript — theorizing why a policy lever changes marketplace behavior, for whom, and with what unintended effects. Builds the theory of the lever; it does not design the studies (jppm-methods).

Journal-of-Public-Policy-and-Marketing-Skills/skills/jppm-theory-development/SKILL.md

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# Theory Development (jppm-theory-development)

## When to trigger

- The paper predicts "the policy will work" without an account of *why* or *through what*
- Hypotheses ignore how firms, platforms, or intermediaries will respond to the rule
- Reviewers could ask "why would this effect differ for vulnerable consumers?" and you have no answer
- Unintended consequences (boomerang, substitution, information overload) are plausible but untheorized
- You have a mechanism story from consumer psychology but no bridge to a policy instrument

## What "theory" means at JPP&M

JPP&M does not demand a novel psychological process the way JCP does, and it is not a theory-only outlet like AMR. Its bar is a **theory of the policy lever**: a disciplined account of how a specific instrument — a mandated disclosure, a marketing restriction, a default, a tax, an enforcement action — propagates through the marketplace to change welfare-relevant outcomes. Good JPP&M theorizing is usually **middle-range**: it borrows constructs from consumer research, economics of information, or regulatory-focus and protection-motivation traditions, and assembles them around the instrument. The payoff is predictions a policy analyst could not have written down: who responds, who doesn't, what the instrument's format does, and where behavior leaks around the rule.
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