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 collaboration of local governments with the public. Citizens can perform the role of both partner and customer in public service delivery. This paper examines citizen feedback based on citizen sourcing in Barcelona. In this setting, citizens monitor and evaluate public services using a feedback system to register their complaints. Nevertheless, their propensity to make complaints may be influenced by socioeconomic factors, political activism, or partisan alignment. This article analyzes the determinants of citizen complaints about eight urban public services in Barcelona using a panel data approach. We use monthly observations from the city’s feedback system from 2014 to 2019, at a district level, conducting fixed-effect estimations. We find that, while political participation is related to a higher propensity to complain, economic status, educational attainment, and partisan alignment do not have a significant association with complaints. Furthermore, we discuss our results in relation to the satisfaction survey of the city