Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

The goal of this paper is analyzing the non-linear relationship among citizen satisfaction, social capital, collective efficacy, and co-production. Co-production is the contribution from and cooperation among service users and producers to increase the volume and the quality of public services (Bovaird & Loeffler, 2010; Ostrom, 1996). Through such activities, public services can improve their quality, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Recently, Bovaird, Van Ryzin, Loeffler, and Parrado (2015) find a negative linear relationship between citizen satisfaction and non-collective co-production. However, negativity bias – human minds and decisions are more influenced by negative things than the same intensity of positive things (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Rozin & Royzman, 2001) – implies a non-linear relationship between co-production and citizen satisfaction. Furthermore, very dissatisfied people will not be willing to co-produce because it is not worth the effort to improve services. Moderately dissatisfied citizens will co-produce the most because the benefit is the largest. Coproduction will then decrease as satisfaction increases. Hence, there will be a non-linear relationship between citizen satisfaction and co-production.

In this study, I will evaluate the role of social capital (trust and networks) and collective efficacy in the model. Collective efficacy refers to expectations for social controls to achieve shared goals, such as preventing crimes and increasing safety in neighborhoods (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). People with high social capital and collective efficacy believe that they can positively change their community. Social capital and collective efficacy will thus have positive relationships with co-production. The relationships will be logistic because of marginal returns and because of limited time and resources to co-produce. Moreover, I expect satisfaction will positively interact with both social capital and collective efficacy.

Other research suggests an interaction between social capital and collective efficacy (Frieling, Lindenberg, & Stokman, 2014; Putnam, 2000). Waverijn, Groenewegen, and de Klerk (2017) find a larger effect of social capital on co-production in the presence of collective efficacy at the municipal level in the Netherlands. Thus, a positive interaction between collective efficacy and social capital is expected.

The current paper attempts to see how citizen assessments (satisfaction) with government performance relates to their engagement in coproducing public services. In addition, knowing the role of social capital and collective efficacy will provide a greater understanding of how to manage citizen co-production. The study will expand the framework by adding new variables, social capital and collective efficacy. The results from the studies by Bovaird et al. (2015) and Waverijn et al. (2017) will be replicated by using the US data collected in 2014 from AmericasBarometer (www.AmericasBarometer.org). I am planning to apply a polynomial model to test the non-linear relationship between satisfaction and coproduction and to use logarithmic models to evaluate the logarithmic relationship between social capital/collective efficacy and co-production.