Exploring Managerial Attitudes Toward Various Participation Mechanisms in Response to Citizen Satisfaction Signals on Public Service Quality

• Author: Jongsun Park,Heontae Shin,Youngmin Oh
• Date: 01 May 2022
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/00953997211048396
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211048396

Administration & Society

2022, Vol. 54(5) 878 –902

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997211048396

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Article

Exploring Managerial

Attitudes Toward

Various Participation

Mechanisms in Response

to Citizen Satisfaction

Signals on Public Service

Quality

Youngmin Oh1, Heontae Shin2,

and Jongsun Park3

Abstract

This study identifies the impacts of different citizen satisfaction signals

(positive/negative) on managers’ agreement to use various participation

channels. Citizen satisfaction with public service quality plays an essential

role in managers’ accountability expectations. Accordingly, it is crucial to

examine how public managers use participation mechanisms, reacting to

citizen satisfaction signals on public service quality. The results confirm a

negativity bias: Managers are more reactive to citizens’ negative signals than

a positive signal in their service quality evaluations. However, the negative

signal’s effect does not reach the participation tools, where the degree of

their decision-making is highly delegated to citizens.

Keywords

citizen participation, performance information, service quality

1Dongguk University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

2Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

3Gachon University, Seongnam-si, Republic of Korea

Corresponding Author:

Heontae Shin, Department of Public Administration, Seoul National University, Gwanak-gu,

Seoul 08826, Republic of Korea.

Email: heontshin@gmail.com

1048396AAS0010.1177/00953997211048396Administration & SocietyOh et al.

research-article2021

Oh et al. 879

Introduction

Citizen participation is defined as a process in which people participate in

policy or administrative decision-making (Arnstein, 1969; Irvin & Stansbury,

2004; King et al., 1998; Nabatchi, 2010; Roberts, 2004; Walters et al., 2000).

It has been an important issue in public administration studies because gov-

ernment produces desirable outcomes by operationalizing participatory

mechanisms in public service delivery (Moynihan, 2008; Roberts, 2004). For

example, citizens not only require government to increase expenditures to

address poor public services through participatory budgeting, but they can

also suggest various ideas to enhance service quality in public hearings. In

this sense, citizen participation is a useful tool to improve public service qual-

ity through citizens’ performance feedback. New public management (NPM)

theory also emphasizes that citizens are regarded as customers in service

delivery processes, and managers are accountable for citizen satisfaction with

service quality (Osborne & Gaebler, 1992; Thomas, 2013).

Accordingly, an important task of citizen participation studies is to clarify

managerial attitudes toward participation mechanisms when they are exposed

to data on citizen satisfaction with service quality in an NPM era. Because

managers are responsible for service performance, they may be interested in

using participation mechanisms as citizen feedback channels responding to

external public service performance information. Prior studies indicate that

public managers can influence when and how citizen participation is initiated

and organized (Eckerd & Heidelberg, 2020; Feldman & Khademian, 2002;

Nalbandian, 1999). Although initial participation mechanisms are formally

decided on in institutional settings, managers interact with elected officials or

the public to administer appropriate participation mechanisms. In practice,

they initiate the forms of participation mechanisms, the selection of partici-

pants, and the reflection of citizens’ ideas or opinions through their commu-

nication with stakeholders (Eckerd & Heidelberg, 2020). Therefore, as

administrative designers of participatory processes, public managers con-

sider which tools are appropriate to improve public service quality. Their

attitudes toward various participation mechanisms play essential roles in

determining when and how government creates participatory governance

structures in response to public demands.

Despite the importance of managers’ roles in designing participation

mechanisms, scholars have rarely focused on uncovering their attitudes

about using various participation mechanisms—including reactions to vari-

ous performance indicators, such as citizen satisfaction with service qual-

ity. Accordingly, this study aims to answer the following three research

questions: