Portland\u27s Multifamily Recycling Program: a Study of Coproduction Policy Implementation and Citizen Involvement

This study is on coproduction as a governing policy instrument. Coproduction can be understood as the joint production of services by local officials and individual citizens intended to raise the quality and or amount of service provision. The concept of coproduction as developed in this study suggests that urban services are not simply created by officials and delivered to a passive public. Rather that actions of citizens are an integral part of the service production process. The study purposes are two-fold: (1) to construct a model of coproduction which provides a basis by which citizen involvement in the provision of public services can be fully understood and appreciated; and (2) to examine the usefulness of this model by using it to frame and guide evaluative research on a specific program which targets coproductive participation of citizens. The research examined efforts to implement a program to encourage recycling by residents in multifamily complexes in the City of Portland by involving the direct participation of the managers of the complexes. The research conducted in this study addressed both the inputs and outcomes of citizen involvement in coproduction. Findings of this research are suggestive of the potential importance of both inclusion and volition to furthering citizen involvement in the coproductive process. The level of citizen involvement in producing the programmatic outcomes was by most measures demonstrated to be very important. The results of the investigation in demonstrating the importance of involvement in coproduced programs in generating broader levels of community awareness and involvement, however, were not as conclusive. The model of coproduction developed in this study provides a potentially useful conceptualization of the process and outcomes of coproduction. The empirical investigation provides an assessment of the nature and strength of the relationship between citizen involvement and the coproductive process in the case of Portland\u27s multifamily recycling program. Both the economic and civic considerations of coproduction which were specified and measured in the research contribute to a number of observations about coproduction as a policy instrument leading to several policy recommendations for programs which are built on citizen involvement