Are You Satisfied? Citizen Feedback and Delivery of Urban Services
Citizen feedback is considered an effective means for improving the performance of public utilities. But how well does such information reflect the actual quality of service delivery? Do so-called scorecards or report cards measure public service d...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2003/06/2388825/satisfied-citizen-feedback-delivery-urban-services http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18162 |
| Summary: | Citizen feedback is considered an
effective means for improving the performance of public
utilities. But how well does such information reflect the
actual quality of service delivery? Do so-called scorecards
or report cards measure public service delivery accurately,
or do personal and community characteristics have a
significant impact on residents' assessment of service
quality? Deichmann and Lall investigate these questions
using newly available household survey data on access to and
satisfaction with selected public services in two Indian
cities-Bangalore and Jaipur. They develop a framework where
actual levels of services received, as well as expectations
about service performance, influence a household's
satisfaction with service delivery. The authors find that
satisfaction increases with improvements in the
household's own service status, a finding that supports
the use of scorecard initiatives. But the results also
suggest that a household's satisfaction is influenced
by how service quality compares with that of its neighbors
or peers and by household level characteristics such as
welfare and tenure status. This implies that responses in
satisfaction surveys are at least in part determined by
factors that are unrelated to the service performance
experienced by the household. |
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