Social Class, Ingroup–Outgroup Comparison, and Citizen Evaluations: Is User Satisfaction Linked to Outcome Disparities?

Abstract

Research on citizen satisfaction has emphasized the role of service quality (including expectations for quality) in shaping citizens’ evaluations of public services. This article considers an understudied but important aspect of public service delivery—equity—and investigates how disparities in service outcomes between disadvantaged and advantaged groups affect citizens’ evaluations of service providers. This study also examines whether citizens with different socioeconomic status (SES) have different perceptions toward the outcome disparities. Using individual-level data from secondary schools, we find that service users appear to recognize and care about a performance gap among social strata. Even when a student’s individual outcome is held constant, satisfaction varies with the school-level performance gap between high-SES and low-SES students. This finding suggests that service users are concerned about not just their outcomes but also the relative positioning of outcomes for those of their own social group compared with other groups.

Citizen Satisfaction Research in Public Administration: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

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Citizen-Centric Strategies During Crisis Outbreak: An Overview

“…It consists of developing public services to meet people's needs, the openness of information for easy access, and quality in service delivery. According to Song et al (2020), there could be a similar degree of public services for citizens from different socioeconomic classes. However, they can come to different conclusions about the services, since different sets of perceived success and expectations affect their perceptions.…”

Understanding Gaps Between Objective and Subjective Performance Measures: Accreditation of Public Service Organizations and Citizen Satisfaction

“…Despite the mixed evidence regarding the value of citizen surveys and the somewhat critical views toward governments’ reliance on them, there is a growing understanding that what citizens think about the quality of the public services they receive can mirror objective assessments of organizational performance (Charbonneau & Van Ryzin, 2012; Kim & Kim, 2022; Van Ryzin et al, 2008). Since citizens actually consume a given service, their opinions can effectively complement objective or quantitative measures of public service performance (Kim & Kim, 2022; Song et al, 2020).…”