Urban Policy Making and Subjective Service Evaluations: Are They Compatible?

The Importance of the Indicator of Satisfaction Chosen

“…In the local public services framework, there are also studies that measure the relationship between the indicators of quality of public services with taxes and municipal expenditures (Beck et al 1987) and studies which measure the relationship between objective indicators of certain public services such as the police and parks with the subjective judgments of citizens (Brudney and England 1982;Brown and Coutler 1983). More recently, the levels of citizen satisfaction regarding the same public services were compared between towns (Miller and Miller 1991;Kobayashi and Miller 2000).…”

Spatial statistical analysis of dissatisfaction with the performance of local government in the Gauteng City-Region, South Africa

“…In such instances, the government establishes internally the benchmarks against which its performance is measured. In contrast, external measures of performance also referred to as 'soft' or 'subjective' measures are often established using citizen satisfaction surveys (Brudney and England, 1982). However, discrepancies between the two measures of performance have been highlighted in the literature to the extent of probing whether external measures of performance can also be considered as a means for evaluating government performance.…”

Users’ Satisfaction of Public Utility Services – Multivariate System Analysis

“…Brudney and England (1982) argue that satisfaction with the 'impacts' of services is significant in itself but also provides important descriptive information to policy makers, which they suggest is especially important in the absence of the market mechanisms of private ownership and competition. Satisfaction with urban services can be understood in a number of different ways.…”