Bureaucratic contacts and their impact on citizen satisfaction with local government agencies: The influence of expectation
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076719840065 |
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Public Policy and Administration
2021, Vol. 36(1) 41–68
Bureaucratic contacts
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DOI: 10.1177/0952076719840065
citizen satisfaction
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with local government
agencies: The influence
of expectation
Feng Wang
Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, China
Kyu-Nahm Jun
Wayne State University, USA
Lili Wang
Arizona State University, USA
Abstract
This study investigates key aspects of administrative process in citizen contacts with local
government agencies and their impact on citizen satisfaction with those agencies in an
institutional context of limited accountability and channels for obtaining information of
public service outcomes and performance. Using survey data collected in a Chinese city
district, we examine the effect of administrative processes—the quality and results of
citizens’ bureaucratic contacts—on their satisfaction with local police departments and
the role of citizens’ expectation in this relationship. The findings indicate that both quality
and results of bureaucratic contacts are significantly related to citizen satisfaction.
Additionally, the relationships of citizen satisfaction and bureaucratic contacts are mod-
erated by citizens’ expectation on the performance of local government agencies. The
results suggest that using proper communication strategies, which help shape citizen
expectation, and improving citizens’ experiences in the administrative processes are
important practices that could increase citizen satisfaction.
Keywords
Bureaucratic contacts, citizen satisfaction, expectation, local government
Corresponding author:
Feng Wang, School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics,
Add: Room 611, Phoenix Building, 777 Guoding Road, Shanghai 200433, China.
Email: wang.feng@mail.shufe.edu.cn
42
Public Policy and Administration 36(1)
Introduction
In recent decades, governments in both developed and developing countries have
been increasingly using citizen satisfaction to evaluate government performance
(Andrews and Van de Walle, 2013; Chen et al., 2010; Grosso and Van Ryzin,
2012). As Brown (2007) points out, ‘‘Under the rising pressure to be more account-
able to their constituents, public managers at all levels have turned to measures of
citizen satisfaction with public services to gauge performance’’ (p. 559). China, the
world’s largest nation-state with an authoritarian regime, has been paying growing
attention to citizen satisfaction since the economic liberalization reform of
Deng Xiaoping (Gao, 2012). This trend has intensified with the ‘‘service-oriented’’
government reform in China since 2003 (Tsao, 2009; Wang, 2009). Chinese local
governments have started to use results from citizen satisfaction surveys to improve
service delivery (Gao, 2012). In light of this trend, this study investigates the factors
associated with citizen satisfaction with local public agency in China, where the
authoritarian political system and the accountability mechanisms of civil servants
are different from the West.
Previous literature on citizen satisfaction focuses on individual level factors,
such as age, race, socioeconomic status, and individual political attitude (Brown
and Coulter, 1983; Cheurprakobkit, 2000; Dehoog et al., 1990; Durand, 1976;
Percy, 1986; Schuman and Gruenberg, 1972). Recently citizen satisfaction research
has adopted an expectations disconfirmation approach to examine the relationship
between citizen satisfaction and the prior experience and expectation of service
outcomes (Morgeson, 2013; Nicolai et al., 2017; Roch and Poister, 2006; Van
Ryzin, 2006). These studies suggest that public managers need to improve particu-
lar services’ quality and outcomes to increase citizen satisfaction, which reflects the
focus of results-oriented New Public Management (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011).
However, in the psychology and legal studies fields, evidence shows that people’s
experience and perception of the administrative process are also very important in
shaping their attitude towards the governments (Reisig and Parks, 2000; Tyler,
2006). In the public administration field, only a handful of studies directly examine
the effect of administrative process on citizens’ evaluation of government agencies
(Brown, 2007; Herian et al., 2012; Van Ryzin, 2015). For example, Brown (2007)
finds that citizens who have poor-quality interaction with police officers are likely
to report low ratings for services. Herian et al. (2012) find that process fairness has
a material impact on citizens’ evaluations of local government. Thus, we believe
that empirical investigation of how the administrative process influences citizen
satisfaction is warranted.
In addition, most of the existing studies on citizen satisfaction, and theories
developed on the subject have been based on western countries, such as the
United States and the United Kingdom, where governments are service-oriented
and the accountability mechanisms are highly functional, and citizens are readily
able to access information of service outcomes and performance. Little is yet
known about the influence of administrative process on citizen satisfaction with
Wang et al.
43
government and the role of citizens’ performance expectation in a different political
and institutional context. China is the largest authoritarian country where citizens
have difficulties to either voice or exit for public services they received, and to
access information about service inputs, output, and outcomes. Personal experi-
ence of how they receive actual services is particularly crucial in their subjective
satisfaction evaluation. Therefore, empirical studies on whether and how adminis-
trative processes of receiving services influence citizen satisfaction are particularly
needed in China. Although there are some studies on China’s citizen satisfaction
with public services or governments, most of them focus on the development of
indicators or index of citizen satisfaction (see Yang’s review, 2012). To the best of
our knowledge, among a few studies on the relationship between citizen satisfac-
tion and service outcomes or government performance (such as Feng and Zhong,
2016; Lin, 2013; Zheng et al., 2014), none of them investigate how the administra-
tive process affects citizen satisfaction and the moderating role of expectation in
this relationship. This study builds on and expands the extant literature, such as
expectations disconfirmation and expectations anchoring models, by examining
how key aspects of administrative process may shape citizen satisfaction using a
citizen survey from a district of F city in the Guangdong Province of China.
Specifically, we examine how citizens’ performance expectation and the experience
of bureaucratic contacts, defined as the quality and results of citizen contacts with a
government agency, affect citizen satisfaction with the local government agencies,
and whether or how citizens’ performance expectation on the government agency
further moderates these relationships.
The findings of the study contribute to the theoretical understanding of how the
process of citizen contacts and citizens’ performance expectation on government
agencies are associated with the level of citizen satisfaction. This study also pro-
vides practical implications for public managers who seek to improve their inter-
action with citizens in the service delivery process and to manage citizens’
expectation of public agencies. More importantly, this study contributes to the
existing literature by examining citizen satisfaction in a political and social contexts
in which citizens have only limited channels to voice their opinion about public
services and in which accountability mechanisms of civil servants are somewhat
limited in local governments.
The rest of the article proceeds as follows. The second section proposes the
theoretical framework and research hypotheses. The third section describes the
survey and the methods used to test the hypotheses followed by the research
findings. The final section provides a discussion of the findings and managerial
implications of this study.
Literature review and theoretical framework of citizen
satisfaction
Early studies of citizen satisfaction predominately focus on how individual demo-
graphic characteristics, such as age, gender, social economic status, race, marital
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Public Policy and Administration 36(1)
status (Brown and Coulter, 1983; Cheurprakobkit, 2000; Dehoog et al., 1990;
Durand, 1976; Jiang et al., 2012; Percy, 1986; Schuman and Gruenberg, 1972;
Wu and Sun, 2009) and neighborhood characteristics, such as poverty and residen-
tial mobility (Dai and Johnson, 2009; Reisig and Parks, 2003), shape citizen
satisfaction.
Recent studies examine the relationship between citizen satisfaction and
perceived service outcome from the perspective of citizens’ expectation and the
disconfirmation of expectations which implies that citizens’ subjective perception
and evaluations are jointly determined by citizens’ expectation and the perceived
service outcome (see Van de Walle’s comprehensive review, 2018). However, the
literature on legal studies and psychology reveal that citizen’s satisfaction with
government is not only influenced by the perceived service outcomes, but also by
the process through which citizens receive the services, particularly legal services
provided by the courts and the police departments (Reisig and Parks,...
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