Linking citizens’ ratings to services quality improvements: an empirical analysis and some potential solutions

The “New Public Management” paradigm strongly relies on a commitment to performance measurement together with citizen (customer) orientation. In this perspective, both objective quality assessments and citizens’ perceived (subjective) quality should become inputs for decision-making. Anyway according to available literature, it is still not clear if and how citizen ratings can be effectively translated into managerial decisions leading to quality improvements. The aim of this paper is to contribute to close this theoretical and practical gap. A mail survey was conducted among a sample of Italian town majors in spring 2008 in order to investigate this issue from local government point of view and to test the feasibility of some potential solutions. 44 questionnaires were returned, showing unexpected results as compared to available literature. Data, for example, highlight that the link between citizens’ ratings and services quality improvements could become real by binding a part of the financial resource transfers from central government to yearly citizens’ satisfaction ratings. Results will be discussed and managerial implications will be derived