Citizen Participation in Local Government Decision Making
| Author | Mary K. Feeney,Wan-Ling Huang |
| DOI | 10.1177/0734371X15576410 |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2015
Article
Review of Public Personnel Administration
2016, Vol. 36(2) 188 –209
Citizen Participation in
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0734371X15576410
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Making: The Role of Manager
Motivation
Wan-Ling Huang1 and Mary K. Feeney2
Abstract
Engaging the public in government decision making is an important value and priority
in a democratic society. Although there is research investigating public perceptions of
citizen participation opportunities and efforts, little research focuses on understanding
the motivations that public managers have to encourage citizen participation. This
research seeks to understand the ways in which public managers’ motivations are
related to engaging the public in organizational decision making. We use data from
two national surveys of U.S. local government managers conducted in 2010 and 2012
to investigate the extent to which performance-based rewards and public service
motivation (PSM) contribute to citizen participation in government decision making
and examine the ways in which the relationship between PSM and citizen participation
is moderated by performance-based rewards and mediated by value congruence.
The results indicate that performance-based rewards are negatively related to citizen
participation in government decision making whereas PSM is positively related to
citizen participation both directly and indirectly through person–organization value
congruence.
Keywords
public service motivation, performance-based rewards, person–organization fit, local
government decision making, citizen participation
1Tamkang University, New Taipei City, Taiwan, Republic of China
2Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA
Corresponding Author:
Wan-Ling Huang, Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, Tamkang University, No.
151, Yingzhuan Rd., Tamsui Dist., New Taipei City 25137, Taiwan, Republic of China.
Email: whuang24@mail.tku.edu.tw
Huang and Feeney
189
Introduction
Researchers and practitioners regularly call for U.S. government to more broadly
incorporate citizens into the governing process (Bingham, Nabatchi, & O’Leary, 2005;
Ventriss, 2002). As indicated in prior studies, a higher level of citizen participation in
political decision making may increase public trust in government and citizen compli-
ance with public policy (Beierle & Konisky, 2000; Wang & Wan Wart, 2007).
Researchers argue that citizen participation may contribute to a better democracy
where people tend to feel more responsible for public affairs (Michels, 2011; Michels
& De Graaf, 2010). More importantly, citizen participation may help governments
identify public values and make decisions that better satisfy citizen needs (Mansuri &
Rao, 2012; Nabatchi, 2012). To encourage and facilitate citizen participation in deci-
sion making, many governments have legal requirements or regulations requiring
agencies to include public input in policy-making activities. For instance, North
Carolina General Statute §159-12 obliges government to include citizen inputs into
budgeting decisions and then make budgetary information open to the public.
Some propose a model of citizen participation through which public inputs can
effectively contribute to government decision making (Creighton, 2005; Renn, Webler,
Rakel, Dienel, & Johnson, 1993). The advancement in information and communica-
tion technologies (ICTs) holds the promise for better positioning governments to
engage with the public through a variety of mechanisms, including social media,
online public forums, interactive technologies, and multiple venues for broadcasting
and posting information about government activities (Chun, Shulman, Sandoval, &
Hovy, 2010; Jennings & Zeitner, 2003; Nisbet & Scheufele, 2004; Norris, 2001). With
this increase in ICT tools for enhancing citizen participation, and in some cases legal
and regulatory requirements to engage the citizenry in decision making, it remains
unclear how motivated public managers are to pursue citizen participation activities.
Although the promotion of citizen participation has been commonly considered a
mission of government agencies, public managers may have varying attitudes toward
citizen participation in government decision making, perceiving it as a critical mission
or perceiving the pressures to engage the public as especially burdensome, thus result-
ing in different levels of interaction with the public (Yang & Callahan, 2007; Zhang &
Yang, 2009). Moynihan (2003) noted that public managers may be reluctant to encour-
age citizen participation in decision making because citizen participation increases
administrative costs and takes away the decision-making power of public managers. It
is thus important for public administration researchers and practitioners to understand
how to motivate public managers to value and facilitate citizen participation in gov-
ernment decision making.
Extrinsic rewards or punishments are commonly used in private organizations to
induce desirable organizational behavior or to prevent people from taking unwanted
actions (Booth & Frank, 1999; Gielen, Kerkhofs, & van Ours, 2010; Lazear, 2000).
With the perspective of new public management (NPM), governments have adopted
similar incentive systems with the goal of increasing government performance and the
ability to respond to citizen demands. While extrinsic awards can motivate employees,
190
Review of Public Personnel Administration 36(2)
others argue that intrinsic motivators, doing an activity for inherent interest and enjoy-
ment of the task, might be better suited to increasing performance and engagement in
the public sector. Perry and Wise (1990) developed the concept of public service moti-
vation (PSM), noting that individuals’ commitment to the public interest may better
motivate desirable behavior for public nature of work. Self-determination theory
(SDT) further conceptualizes motivation along a continuum which varies based on the
extent to which a behavior is externally required and regulated or has been internalized
and integrated into the individual’s values and interests (Deci, 1971, 1975; Deci &
Ryan, 1985). According to SDT, the relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic
rewards may not be additive, but instead some external motivations may diminish
feelings of autonomy and intrinsic motivation, having negative effect on desirable
behavior.
This research aims to address the following questions:
Research Question 1: To what extent do extrinsic motivations (performance-based
rewards) and autonomous motivators (PSM) among public managers contribute to
the level of citizen participation in government decision making?
Research Question 2: Whether the influence of PSM on citizen participation is
contingent upon contextual factors such as organization–person value
congruence?
Research Question 3: To what degree do performance-based reward systems
undermine the positive impact of PSM on citizen participation in local
governments?
The data come from two national surveys of U.S. local government managers
administered in 2010 and 2012, enabling us to examine the relationships among per-
ceived performance-based rewards, PSM, organization–person value congruence, and
citizen participation in decision making between two points of time. Structural equa-
tion modeling makes it possible to take measurement errors into account and allows
contextual factors such as organization–person value congruence to be an exogenous
and endogenous variable simultaneously. Findings of our analysis indicate that perfor-
mance-based rewards are negatively associated with citizen participation while PSM
increases citizen participation in local government decision making. And PSM affects
citizen participation both directly and indirectly through person–organization value
congruence. In contrast to our expectation, this analysis does not provide evidence that
higher level of performance-based rewards diminish the positive effect of PSM on citi-
zen participation in local government decision making.
Literature Review and Conceptual Model
Historically, the motivation theory literature outlines two general types of motivation
that induce people to do or not do something: intrinsic and extrinsic motivations
(Herzberg, 1987; Ryan & Deci, 2000). According to Ryan and Deci (2000), extrinsic
motivation is the motivation to do something “because it leads to a separable
Huang and Feeney
191
outcome,” whereas intrinsic motivation is to do something “because it is inherently
interesting or enjoyable” (p. 55). Economists emphasize the influence of extrinsic
reinforcement such as material rewards or punishment on inducing desirable manage-
rial action and increasing organizational performance (Booth & Frank, 1999; Gielen
et al., 2010; Lazear, 2000). By assuming that human decision making is a result of
rational calculation, expectancy theory argues that people are inclined to adopt the
option that can bring maximum benefits with the least costs (Porter & Lawler, 1968;
Vroom, 1964). Therefore, an effective motivation system in an organizational context
is one that will increase the expected rewards or reduce the anticipated costs of orga-
nizational members.
In line with this perspective, and in an effort to link extrinsic rewards to perfor-
...
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