Performance information and citizens’ tendencies towards sanctioning ...

The present study aims to contribute to the research on public service performance and accountability in the public sector first, by assessing how different trends in citizen satisfactions (i.e. increasing and decreasing assessment of public service performance) affect citizens’ expectations of public service performance, and second, whether and how presented performance information influences particular behavioral intentions by citizens, i.e. assigning reward or blame towards different actors. More specifically, we apply a survey experiment to look at possible differences in the levels of reward and blame across different performance scenarios of street cleanliness, and to explore which local government actors (the mayor or the administration) are connected to the performance. This causal linkage is considered as driving the assignment of reward for good performance and blame for bad performance from the perspective of citizens (Alicke 2000).  

Data have been collected using a representative online panel survey in Germany (n=2,277) where participants were initially randomized into two treatment groups (G1, G2) that have been presented different levels (i.e. high and low) and types (i.e. graph and picture) of performance information about the street cleanliness in a dummy city. Participants in the first group were provided with a graph that showed decreasing levels of citizen satisfaction while participants in the second group groups were presented with increasing levels of citizen satisfaction with street cleanliness. Subsequently, participants were asked to what extent they assigned reward or blame for the results to the mayor versus to the administration.