How Policy Instruments Shape Recipients’ Evaluations of Service: The Case of Housing Policy for Military Personnel in Korea

Abstract

Many governments have implemented indirect policy instruments as an alternative to direct instruments for providing public services. However, the effectiveness of the instruments from the perspective of recipients has not yet been compared in depth in the literature. This study investigates the recipients’ evaluation of the differences between public housing and housing vouchers, which were exogenously assigned by the government to recipients, using ordered logit and generalized ordered logit models to analyze data collected in 2019 from Korean military personnel. The findings indicate that the evaluations of the services delivered by housing vouchers were more positive than those of public housing, and the magnitude of the difference between evaluations varied according to the attributes of the household decision makers and the rural or urban location of the leased house. These findings provide empirically grounded contributions to the selection of policy instruments and uncover the contexts in which each policy instrument may be implemented for the best effect.

Keywords:

• housing voucher
• military housing
• policy instruments
• public housing
• service evaluation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

Lee’s work was supported by the fund of the research promotion program, Gyeongsang National University, 2021.

Notes on contributors

Jae Bok Lee

Jae Bok Lee is an Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration, Gyeongsang National University, Republic of Korea. Her research interests are public management, equity and public policy, policy instrument, public service delivery, organizational theory, and public finance.

David Shin

David Shin is an Associate Research Fellow, Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, Republic of Korea. His research interests include public management and finance and policy theories. He is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (BA in Economics) and Seoul National University (MPP and PhD in Public Policy).