Why People Co-Produce: Analysing citizens’ perceptions on co-planning engagement in health care services

Abstract

The aim of this article is to comprehend the motivation of citizens to co-produce. More specifically, it considers citizens’ motivations to engage in co-planning activities of health care services. The article brings together theoretical insights and empirical data. First, we integrate insights from different strands of literature. We combine literature on citizen participation, political efficacy, co-production, volunteerism, public service motivation, and customer engagement to offer a first understanding of citizens’ motivations to actively engage as co-producers of public services. Next, empirical data are derived from one specific case: citizens participating in client councils in health care organizations. Q-methodology, a method designed to systematically study persons’ viewpoints, is used to distinguish different perspectives citizen have on their engagement in co-production. Our analysis of citizens’ motivations to engage in client councils enables us to identify four types of citizen co-producers, which we label: the semi-professional, the socializer, the network professional, and the aware co-producer. Implications for future research studying citizens’ motivations in a broader range of co-production cases are discussed.

Key words:

• Co-production
• co-planning
• citizen motivation
• public service motivation
• health care organizations
• Q-methodology

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank Mirella Flinterman for her help in collecting data for this research and Dr Antoaneta Dimitrova for her suggestions on the use of Q-methodology.

Notes

¹ This act dates from 29 February 1996 (Overheid.nl 2012).

² Downloaded from http://www.lrz.de/~schmolck/qmethod/.

³ We used the Brown QCENT analysis instead of the Horst.