E-Government and provision of public services: economic, social, and political determinants of citizen complaints

Abstract

Today’s technological advances have created new channels for the collaboration of local governments with citizens, who can perform the role of both partner and customer in public service delivery. This article examines an initiative in Barcelona in which citizens monitor and evaluate public services using a feedback system to register their complaints. Specifically, it analyzes how socioeconomic factors, political activism, and partisan alignment influence citizen complaints about eight urban public services in Barcelona. Using a panel of monthly district-level observations from the city’s feedback system for 2014 to 2019 and fixed-effect estimations, the results show that political participation is related to a higher propensity to complain, while economic status, educational attainment, and partisan alignment do not have a significant association with complaints. These findings are then considered and discussed in relation to a survey of citizen satisfaction with urban public services in Barcelona.

Notes

1 See: https://opendata-ajuntament.barcelona.cat/data/es/dataset/iris

2 As an example, our first observation is Type="Incident", Area= "Collection and cleaning of the urban space", Element= "Clean streets and/or squares", Detail= "Objects to clean/remove".

3 We did not include Public Transportation in our study, because this service is provided and managed by the Metropolitan Area, in contrast to Mobility, for which the city government is responsible. A total of 1,338 complaints were received regarding the Public Transport service in 2014–2019.

4 We are aware that there may be concerns about reverse causality between political participation and citizens’ complaints: more complaints (less satisfaction) with public services could trigger political participation. We believe, however, that potential endogeneity is not a relevant issue in our research, given the way the measures are obtained. Political participation is measured at the time when local elections are held, while citizens’ complaints are measured in the four years after local election. Given the time span of our sample (2014–2019) and the timing of local elections within our time-period, the lag between citizen complaints and political participation leads us to believe that reverse causality is not a relevant concern.

5 When measured at individual level, both electoral turnout and Vote for Major are dummy variables, each taking values 1 (if Yes) or 0 (If No). When estimations are run with both in the model, the collinearity is extremely high, so that robust results cannot be obtained. For this reason, we decided to contrast each of these variables in different estimations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marianna Sebő

Marianna Sebő is a PhD candidate at Universitat de Barcelona. She received a master’s degree in economics with the specialization of government and markets and games, behavior, and incentives. She is interested in public policy analysis, economics of regulation, and industrial organization. She is currently working on topics concerning political economy and public service delivery.

Germà Bel

Germà Bel is a professor of economics and public policy in the Department of Econometrics, Statistics, and Applied Economics at Universitat de Barcelona. He has been a visiting professor at Cornell University, Princeton University, and Saint Petersburg State University, and visiting scholar at Harvard University, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Paris I-Sorbonne, and European University Institute at Firenze. His research focuses on public sector reform, with emphasis on local public services and infrastructure and transportation.