Citizen Surveys Impact On Decisions In Local Government | Fabio Cassia

The new ?customer oriented? approach in local government significantly relies on the use of citizens surveys. Anyway, it is not clear how satisfaction ratings should be incorporated into the decision-making activity. This is mainly due to the fact that citizens? views on services are not statistically associated with service levels as indicated by objective measures. Moreover public administrators? decisions are characterised by a high degree of complexity since they have to combine ?service? and ?political? components. This paper aims at filling that theoretical and practical gap, by studying if and how surveys outputs actually influence decision maker?s choices. A conceptual model is suggested and an explorative empirical research involving a sample of majors is described. Results show that the perceived reliability of the needs expressed through surveys has a second order effect on the final decision to intervene or not to improve the service quality. Results are then discussed and conclusions are drawn.