An empirical analysis of municipal efficiency and local resident satisfaction by council type in Victorian local government

While a significant body of literature exists on local government efficiency, much less is known about its effectiveness, especially financial performance and resident satisfaction. To address this gap in the empirical literature, the present paper uses system‐wide official annual data on resident satisfaction in the Victorian state local government system in Australia to investigate the relationship between annual net operating results and overall citizen satisfaction. In addition, in order to garner a deeper understanding of this relationship, we evaluated the assumption in the ‘near‐to‐zero balance’ public accounting literature that local residents prefer an insignificant annual balance in operating performance compared to substantial annual losses or surpluses. We found that there is a significant negative association between overall satisfaction and its components and financial performance for Victorian local government as a whole. However, this association is largely restricted to rural councils with surpluses. By contrast, we find no relationship between satisfaction and near‐to‐zero balances. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for both the public accounting literature and local government policymaking.

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“…These results are consistent with the findings in the literature (Drew et al. 2016; Tran and Dollery 2020).…”

Section: Discussion Of Resultssupporting

confidence: 93%

All in the Mind: Citizen Satisfaction and Financial Performance in the Victorian Local Government System

Tran

Dollery

2020

Australian Accounting Review

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“…In addition, we found that the coefficient of population density is positive and statistically significant across all models investigated. This finding accords with Tran and Dollery (Tran & Dollery 2020).…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Population size ( lnPOP and lnPOP 2 ) : A significant association between municipal size by population and resident satisfaction has been established in the empirical literature (Drew et al 2016; Tran & Dollery 2020). The curvilinear relationship between population size and resident satisfaction has been investigated by incorporating the quadratic term of population (Boyne 1996; Drew et al 2016).…”

Section: Empirical Strategymentioning

confidence: 96%

“…To date, no attempt has been made to test whether AI has a significant impact on municipal effectiveness stratified by council type. However, research into other aspects of local government has found that differences in the characteristics of different types of councils, especially rural and urban municipalities, affected their performance (Drew, Kortt and Dollery, Drew et al 2016; Tran & Dollery 2020). We thus investigate whether the relationship between AI and resident satisfaction varies between the different municipal categories in Victorian local government.…”

Section: Administrative Intensity Citizen Satisfaction and Municipal ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Administrative intensity and local resident satisfaction in Victorian local government

Tran

Dollery

2021

Public Administration

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A voluminous empirical literature has focused on organizational characteristics and their relationship to organizational performance in the public sector, including municipal efficiency. However, as yet no effort has been made to examine the impact of administrative intensity on the effectiveness of local authorities, as measured by local resident satisfaction surveys. To address this gap in the literature, this article investigates the effect of administrative intensity on local resident satisfaction in the local government system of the Australian state of Victoria over the period 2014/2015 to 2018/2019. Using regression analysis, we find that there is a significant association between administrative intensity and the effectiveness of municipalities. However, the impact of administrative intensity on municipal effectiveness differs between urban local authorities and rural local authorities. This has significant public policy implications given that a uniform policy prescription may not achieve its intended aims due to the differential effects of the determinants of municipal effectiveness.

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“…Los factores subjetivos incluyen la situación política y la credibilidad de líderes locales específicos, la eficacia de sus actividades, el grado de confianza pública, el espacio de información de interacción con los ciudadanos, los canales de dicha interacción, incluida la retroalimentación. Algunos factores son interdependientes, por lo que la apertura de información de la comunidad, es una de las principales condiciones para aumentar la confianza del público (Tran y Dollery, 2020).…”

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Factores de desarrollo local desde el enfoque de la gestión organizativa

Vergara-Romero

Sorhegui-Ortega

Garnica-Jarrin³

2020

RDLUZ

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La evolución del desarrollo local, como eje estratégico para el desarrollo de un país, es el primer componente que está inmerso en el discurso político y en las normativas de carácter regulador en el territorio ecuatoriano, el cual tiene convenios firmados con organismos multilaterales internacionales. El siguiente artículo analiza los factores sociales de la formación de la comunidad local como un sistema social y la gestión de las autoridades de dicha comunidad. Se utilizó como metodología el diseño fenomenológico hermenéutico y como instrumento se utilizó la observación documental de artículos científicos de revistas indexadas en Web of Science y Scopus. Se concluye que se necesita una mejora del sistema de gobiernos locales, del desarrollo de los recursos mencionados y de las oportunidades para apoyar la actividad social.

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An empirical analysis of municipal efficiency and local resident satisfaction by council type in Victorian local government

Cited by 13 publications

References 54 publications

All in the Mind: Citizen Satisfaction and Financial Performance in the Victorian Local Government System

All in the Mind: Citizen Satisfaction and Financial Performance in the Victorian Local Government System

Administrative intensity and local resident satisfaction in Victorian local government

Factores de desarrollo local desde el enfoque de la gestión organizativa

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