Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Many public goods—such as education, public safety, and public health—are coproduced by citizens and communities, not simply provided by public agencies. Parents help school children read, neighborhood residents report crimes to the police, and people engage in healthy (or unhealthy) behaviors that have profound effects on public health. While the potential benefit from coproduction varies with the nature of the particular public good or service (Ostrom 1996), citizens’ coproduction efforts, in many areas of government activity, are essential to the successful provision of public services. Previous research has shown that coproduction can enhance the quality and quantity of public services (Ostrom 1996; Bovaird 2007) and increase equity in public service provision (Jakobsen and Andersen 2013).

But what are the implications of coproduction for citizens themselves? Levine and Fisher (1984) argue that, theoretically, coproduction arrangements that meet certain conditions can increase citizens’ trust in government, self-efficacy, and their concern for the common good.  Bovaird (2007)’s case studies also illustrate that coproduction can increase citizens’ support for and participation in government.  More broadly, policy feedback theory (Campbell 2003; Schneider and Ingram 1997; Wichowsky & Moynihan 2008) suggests that policy design and delivery mechanisms influence how citizens define themselves and their role in society.  And relatedly, Cook (2014) argues that public administration plays a constitutive (formative) role in shaping citizenship and democratic society, and thus administrative arrangements—including coproduction—represent much more than just a functional means of implementing policy and providing public services.

Based on these theoretical motivations, we hypothesize that coproduction influences how citizens view public services and themselves as citizens. To examine this hypothesis, we design an online survey experiment to test whether and to what extent citizens perceive coproduced public services or programs as more legitimate and effective than services produced and delivered solely by public agencies. We develop four vignettes for common areas of coproduction: education, public safety, public health, and the environment. One group of participants is assigned scenarios that mention coproduction, while the other group is assigned identical scenarios but with no mention of coproduction. For each vignette, we created specifically tailored questions that reflect the respondents’ attitudes toward the policy or program. We also assess their overall view of citizenship and their role in society. Data are collected from an online panel of approximately 800 adults from across the US that is quite diverse in terms of region, age, income, socioeconomic status, and political ideology. The experiment is scheduled for the field in early summer, with results expected well in advance the APPAM conference in November.