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Can't Get No Satisfaction? The Association Between Community Satisfaction and Population Size for Victoria
Author(s) -
Drew Joseph,
Dollery Brian,
Kortt Michael A.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8500.12117
Subject(s) - population size , per capita , government (linguistics) , population , government expenditure , local government , demographic economics , empirical research , empirical evidence , public economics , psychology , economics , demography , statistics , political science , mathematics , sociology , public administration , public finance , macroeconomics , linguistics , philosophy , epistemology
Traditionally, the problem of determining the optimal size in local government has been empirically assessed by estimating the relationship between population size and the costs of services (usually measured in terms of per capita expenditure). These studies, however, have proved largely inconclusive. In comparison, an empirical analysis based on the relationship between the size of government and community satisfaction offers a potentially fruitful contribution to the debate regarding the optimal size of local government. However, to date, few studies have followed this approach. We therefore contribute to this literature by exploring the relationship between population size and community satisfaction for Victorian councils. Our findings provide evidence of an inverted ‘U‐shaped’ relationship, which predicts low community satisfaction at very large and very small population sizes.