Service outsourcing, pricing, and the engagement of citizen groups

ABSTRACT

To shed new light on the contested impact of service outsourcing, the study examines whether service outsourcing is associated with higher cost of entry and if higher pricing impacts service engagement among citizen groups. To this end, the study draws on secondary objective data to capture different ownership types in local authorities community sport provision (public, non-profit, private), the cost of access (£) to use community sport facilities, and the level of service engagement with the service among different citizen groups. The exploratory model draws on analysis of variance with a post-hoc test to examine if significant differences exist between ownership types on pricing and engagement. The empirical observations reveal that service outsourcing is associated with significantly higher pricing relative to traditional local government provision, but no significant differences are found in the levels of engagement among citizen groups between the three ownership types.

KEYWORDS:

• Pricing
• citizen groups
• outsourcing
• stakeholders
• ownership
• community sport

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This study is not directly concerned with the drivers of sport participation; for a detailed overview of research in this related but tangent field see for instance Downward (2007), Downward and Riordan (2007), Downward, Hallmann, and Pawlowski (2014), Lera-López and Rapún-Gárate (2007) and Taylor, Panagouleas, and Ping Kung (2011).

2. Mosaic geo-demographic group profiles are developed from Census, Electorol Roll, Experian Lifestyle Survey, Consumer Credit Activity, Post Office Address File, Shareholders Register, House Price and Council Tax data.