Do More Options Always Benefit the Users of Public Services? An Experimental Study of School Choice, Performance, and Satisfaction

• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Ivan P. Lee,Sebastian Jilke,Oliver James
• Date: 01 January 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13271

110 Public Administration Review • Januar y | Fe brua ry 202 1

Research Article

Abstract: Recent years have seen an increase in choice of provider in many public services, including education.

Proponents of provider choice suggest that it increases users’ satisfaction. However, insights from the psychology of choice

overload suggest that too much choice can be detrimental. The authors use a survey experiment to investigate the effect

of provider choice on parents’ satisfaction with schools (under performance declines and increases). The findings show

that choice increases satisfaction and perceptions of fairness of the process compared with no choice. However, consistent

with choice overload, increasing the number of options does not boost satisfaction. The findings have important

implications for satisfaction as a measure of performance, because user satisfaction seems not to be independent

of choice processes. This suggests lessons for designing delivery systems: although facilitating minimal user choice is

preferable to having no choice, further increasing delivery options may not increase users’ satisfaction.

Evidence for Practice

• Public service users’ choice of provider is an important part of many systems of service delivery including in

education. An experiment with parents finds that they are more satisfied with a school when some choice of

school is available to them, and they also perceive the process as fairer, compared with having no choice.

• Increasing the number of options from some (two) to many (eight) does not further increase parents’

satisfaction or perceptions of fairness. This implies that having some choice is sufficient to satisfy users

and that increasing choice to many options does not always bring benefits. Policy makers need to consider

carefully whether expanding choice to many choices is desirable.

• Whether performance declines or increases does not affect the effect of provider choice on satisfaction, and,

by itself, performance decline lowers satisfaction and perceptions of fairness, consistent with what would be

expected from the findings of previous research on public service performance outcomes and satisfaction.

User choice of provider for the delivery

of public services is a major feature of

reform initiatives as part of the “New

Public Management” (Hood1991; Pollitt and

Bouckaert2011). A sizeable literature has examined

the consequences of greater choice for a variety of

public-service-related outcomes (e.g., Dowding

and John2012; Jilke2015a; Le Grand2007).

However, the effect of choice on user satisfaction,

which is often taken to be a key measure of public

service performance, is relatively underresearched.

While choice can be expected to boost satisfaction

partly because it promotes a sense of autonomy in

interacting with services (Botti and Iyengar2004),

recent psychological research has demonstrated that

under certain circumstances, the provision of more

options may paradoxically undermine satisfaction.

Building on work by Iyengar and Lepper(2000), a

number of experimental studies have demonstrated

that providing customers with an increased number

of options can bring cognitive burdens to them and

result in lower satisfaction with the chosen option

(for meta-analyses, see Chernev, Böckenholt, and

Goodman2015; McShane and Böckenholt2018;

Scheibehenne, Greifeneder, and Todd2010). In

addition, Hafner, White, and Handley(2016) suggest

that when the choice outcome is negative, people

will be inclined to consider the alternatives forgone

as better choices, and this counterfactual thinking

decreases their satisfaction. These findings imply that

providing more options may not always be a good

thing for public service users.

This study’s contribution is twofold. First, we

contribute to the literature about satisfaction with

public services and how the mechanisms of choice

(specifically the number of choice alternatives) affect

users’ satisfaction. In this way, satisfaction is not

just an outcome of the service, as is often assumed,

but is potentially affected by the system of delivery.

Second, this study contributes to the study of the

consequences of choice-based systems in public service

Do More Options Always Benefit the Users of Public

Services? An Experimental Study of School Choice,

Performance, and Satisfaction

Ivan P. Lee

Sebastian Jilke

Oliver James

Rutgers University–Newark

Georgetown University

University of Exeter

Oliver James is professor of political

science at the University of Exeter (United

Kingdom) and works on public policy and

management topics including the politics of

citizen-state relations for core public service

provision (especially policing, health, and

education services). Recent publications

include

Behavioral Public Performance

(Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Email: o.james@exeter.ac.uk

Sebastian Jilke is associate professor

in the McCourt School of Public Policy at

Georgetown University. His research applies

insights from the behavioral sciences to

public management and policy to study how

government reforms affect public employees

and the people they serve.

Email: sebastian.jilke@georgetown.edu

Ivan P. Lee is a doctoral candidate at the

School of Public Affairs and Administration

at Rutgers University–Newark. He

is interested in the areas of public

management, organizational behavior,

human resource management, and

behavioral public administration and policy.

His general research agenda explores the

judgment and decision-making processes

of public employees and the citizens they

serve.

Email: ivan.lee@rutgers.edu

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 81, Iss. 1, pp. 110–120. © 2020 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13271.