Premium
Citizens and Resource Allocation: Improving Decision Making with Interactive Web‐Based Citizen Participation
Author(s) -
Robbins Mark D,
Simonsen Bill,
Feldman Barry
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2008.00891.x
Subject(s) - interactivity , government (linguistics) , consumption (sociology) , business , service (business) , public service , public relations , resource allocation , resource (disambiguation) , face (sociological concept) , marketing , economics , computer science , political science , world wide web , sociology , market economy , computer network , social science , philosophy , linguistics
Collective consumption and benefit characterize many government services. Moreover, government services are mostly paid for collectively through taxes—there is little or no relationship between the taxes paid by a household and its use of a particular service. Public sector decision makers face complex budget problems with difficult solutions. Involving citizens meaningfully in these decisions has long been a conundrum. The authors teamed up with the town of West Hartford, Connecticut, to develop a Web‐based survey to overcome some of these participation problems and help decision makers better understand citizen preferences. The Web survey allowed for real‐time interactivity and was tailored to present respondents with trade‐offs between service levels and taxes.