Electronic Participation Technologies and Perceived Outcomes for Local Government Managers

Abstract

US local governments are under increasing pressure to adopt electronic participation technologies to engage stakeholders in decision-making. The choice set of technologies and the ease with which they can be applied, has potentially increased the complexity of the context within which managers operate. Using data from a national survey of 850 government managers in 500 cities, we investigate whether different channels of e-participation technology and the intensity of e-participation technology use are associated with managers' perceptions of outcomes. We find that the relationships between complexity of e-participation technology and perceived outcomes depend upon the type of external stakeholder group considered.

Key words:

• E-participation
• interactive technology
• local government
• public management

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is funded by the generous support of the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement (IPCE) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The analysis and results presented in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the views of IPCE.

Notes

1 The population size was reduced to 2,380 after removing bad addresses and individuals who were not longer working in the position.