Priming and context effects in citizen satisfaction surveys

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hjortskov, Morten
• 署名单位: Aarhus University
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3298
• DOI: 10.1111/padm.12346
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 912-926
• 关键词: attitude accessibility; urban services; performance; DISCONFIRMATION; determinants; judgments; police

摘要

Citizen satisfaction surveys are used extensively throughout the public sector to assess the performance of public services and to inform decision-makers. Recent research points to cognitive biases that may occur in citizens' perceptions of performance of public services, but we know little about possible biases in the collection of these data. This shortcoming is addressed by investigating the priming and context effects that can arise from the structure of citizen surveysfor example, from the question order in the survey. Two independent experimental studies find that prior positively framed questions about police services affect subsequent satisfaction evaluations of other local public services. However, an informational prime about crime and unrelated questions about family-life satisfaction have little effect on the subsequent satisfaction evaluations. The results show that citizen evaluations of public services can be influenced by irrelevant context effects, but this may depend on the topics of prior questions.