Citizen Participation in Local Government Decision Making

Abstract

Engaging the public in government decision making is an important value and priority in a democratic society. Although there is research investigating public perceptions of citizen participation opportunities and efforts, little research focuses on understanding the motivations that public managers have to encourage citizen participation. This research seeks to understand the ways in which public managers’ motivations are related to engaging the public in organizational decision making. We use data from two national surveys of U.S. local government managers conducted in 2010 and 2012 to investigate the extent to which performance-based rewards and public service motivation (PSM) contribute to citizen participation in government decision making and examine the ways in which the relationship between PSM and citizen participation is moderated by performance-based rewards and mediated by value congruence. The results indicate that performance-based rewards are negatively related to citizen participation in government decision making whereas PSM is positively related to citizen participation both directly and indirectly through person–organization value congruence.

Keywords

public service motivation performance-based rewards person–organization fit local government decision making citizen participation

Introduction

Researchers and practitioners regularly call for U.S. government to more broadly incorporate citizens into the governing process (Bingham, Nabatchi, & O’Leary, 2005; Ventriss, 2002). As indicated in prior studies, a higher level of citizen participation in political decision making may increase public trust in government and citizen compliance with public policy (Beierle & Konisky, 2000; Wang & Wan Wart, 2007). Researchers argue that citizen participation may contribute to a better democracy where people tend to feel more responsible for public affairs (Michels, 2011; Michels & De Graaf, 2010). More importantly, citizen participation may help governments identify public values and make decisions that better satisfy citizen needs (Mansuri & Rao, 2012; Nabatchi, 2012). To encourage and facilitate citizen participation in decision making, many governments have legal requirements or regulations requiring agencies to include public input in policy-making activities. For instance, North Carolina General Statute §159-12 obliges government to include citizen inputs into budgeting decisions and then make budgetary information open to the public.

Some propose a model of citizen participation through which public inputs can effectively contribute to government decision making (Creighton, 2005; Renn, Webler, Rakel, Dienel, & Johnson, 1993). The advancement in information and communication technologies (ICTs) holds the promise for better positioning governments to engage with the public through a variety of mechanisms, including social media, online public forums, interactive technologies, and multiple venues for broadcasting and posting information about government activities (Chun, Shulman, Sandoval, & Hovy, 2010; Jennings & Zeitner, 2003; Nisbet & Scheufele, 2004; Norris, 2001). With this increase in ICT tools for enhancing citizen participation, and in some cases legal and regulatory requirements to engage the citizenry in decision making, it remains unclear how motivated public managers are to pursue citizen participation activities.

Although the promotion of citizen participation has been commonly considered a mission of government agencies, public managers may have varying attitudes toward citizen participation in government decision making, perceiving it as a critical mission or perceiving the pressures to engage the public as especially burdensome, thus resulting in different levels of interaction with the public (Yang & Callahan, 2007; Zhang & Yang, 2009). Moynihan (2003) noted that public managers may be reluctant to encourage citizen participation in decision making because citizen participation increases administrative costs and takes away the decision-making power of public managers. It is thus important for public administration researchers and practitioners to understand how to motivate public managers to value and facilitate citizen participation in government decision making.

Extrinsic rewards or punishments are commonly used in private organizations to induce desirable organizational behavior or to prevent people from taking unwanted actions (Booth & Frank, 1999; Gielen, Kerkhofs, & van Ours, 2010; Lazear, 2000). With the perspective of new public management (NPM), governments have adopted similar incentive systems with the goal of increasing government performance and the ability to respond to citizen demands. While extrinsic awards can motivate employees, others argue that intrinsic motivators, doing an activity for inherent interest and enjoyment of the task, might be better suited to increasing performance and engagement in the public sector. Perry and Wise (1990) developed the concept of public service motivation (PSM), noting that individuals’ commitment to the public interest may better motivate desirable behavior for public nature of work. Self-determination theory (SDT) further conceptualizes motivation along a continuum which varies based on the extent to which a behavior is externally required and regulated or has been internalized and integrated into the individual’s values and interests (Deci, 1971, 1975; Deci & Ryan, 1985). According to SDT, the relationship between extrinsic and intrinsic rewards may not be additive, but instead some external motivations may diminish feelings of autonomy and intrinsic motivation, having negative effect on desirable behavior.

This research aims to address the following questions:

Research Question 1: To what extent do extrinsic motivations (performance-based rewards) and autonomous motivators (PSM) among public managers contribute to the level of citizen participation in government decision making?

Research Question 2: Whether the influence of PSM on citizen participation is contingent upon contextual factors such as organization–person value congruence?

Research Question 3: To what degree do performance-based reward systems undermine the positive impact of PSM on citizen participation in local governments?

The data come from two national surveys of U.S. local government managers administered in 2010 and 2012, enabling us to examine the relationships among perceived performance-based rewards, PSM, organization–person value congruence, and citizen participation in decision making between two points of time. Structural equation modeling makes it possible to take measurement errors into account and allows contextual factors such as organization–person value congruence to be an exogenous and endogenous variable simultaneously. Findings of our analysis indicate that performance-based rewards are negatively associated with citizen participation while PSM increases citizen participation in local government decision making. And PSM affects citizen participation both directly and indirectly through person–organization value congruence. In contrast to our expectation, this analysis does not provide evidence that higher level of performance-based rewards diminish the positive effect of PSM on citizen participation in local government decision making.

Literature Review and Conceptual Model

Historically, the motivation theory literature outlines two general types of motivation that induce people to do or not do something: intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (Herzberg, 1987; Ryan & Deci, 2000). According to Ryan and Deci (2000), extrinsic motivation is the motivation to do something “because it leads to a separable outcome,” whereas intrinsic motivation is to do something “because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable” (p. 55). Economists emphasize the influence of extrinsic reinforcement such as material rewards or punishment on inducing desirable managerial action and increasing organizational performance (Booth & Frank, 1999; Gielen et al., 2010; Lazear, 2000). By assuming that human decision making is a result of rational calculation, expectancy theory argues that people are inclined to adopt the option that can bring maximum benefits with the least costs (Porter & Lawler, 1968; Vroom, 1964). Therefore, an effective motivation system in an organizational context is one that will increase the expected rewards or reduce the anticipated costs of organizational members.

In line with this perspective, and in an effort to link extrinsic rewards to performance, many governments are under pressure to adopt performance-based reward systems. Performance-based reward systems are rooted in the idea that individual and organizational performance will be enhanced if civil servants recognize that attractive extrinsic outcomes—salary, bonus, or promotion—are contingent on their work performance. Extrinsic awards can be used to enhance overall performance or can be used to target particular outcomes. While citizen participation in government decision making is a goal and outcome of many government agencies and citizen satisfaction is an important indicator of government performance, these are rarely used as performance measures in local governments. Instead, performance measures typically focus on more easily measured outputs such as the number of crimes reported, program enrollments, and services provided.

Output-oriented performance measurement is increasingly being adopted by government agencies (Julnes & Holzer, 2001; Poister & Streib, 1999), while it overlooks the ambiguity and divergence of government goals. It is possible that emphasizing these outputs reduces the focus on other, harder-to-measure outcomes such as the inclusion of citizen input in decision-making activities. Thus, we expect that performance-based rewards in local governments may lead to negative outcomes, particularly when the goals of underlying tasks are not clear-cut or not measurable using quantitative criteria (Frey, Homberg, & Osterloh, 2013). In some cases, drawbacks associated with citizen participation such as time-consuming decision-making processes or difficulty coordinating various demands may further make it difficult to report “measurable performance,” thus discouraging investment of manager time and resources into citizen participation efforts. It might be that to receive performance-based rewards, managers are engaging in activities other than citizen participation or activities that reduce citizen participation. In essence, performance-based rewards motivate public managers to care about tangible outputs other than citizen engagement in decision making.

Hypothesis 1: Performance-based rewards in government organizations in Time 1 will be negatively related to citizen participation in government decision making in Time 2.

More recently, SDT has gone beyond the intrinsic–extrinsic dichotomy and argued that motivation varies based on the degree to which a behavior is self-determined and internally controlled (Deci & Ryan, 1985). In contrast to the expectancy theory, some researchers argue that motivations related to feelings of competence, autonomy, and relatedness will be more effective than motivations that are initiated by contingencies external to the person (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999; Wright, 2007), particularly in public and nonprofit sectors where a spirit of altruism is important for the achievement of organizational missions (Crewson, 1997). Nix, Ryan, Manly, and Deci (1999) argued that self-determined behaviors that emerge from intrinsic motivations and expressing one’s values and self (Deci & Ryan, 1985), as compared with externally regulated actions, are more likely to result in maintained and enhanced vitality. Moreover, autonomous motivations will ensure that people are more invested in their behaviors and have more positive experiences in their lives and work environments. Gagné and Deci (2005) posited that extrinsic motivation tends to result in poorer performance on heuristic tasks than autonomous motivation, although the former may have an equal or stronger effect on short-term algorithmic tasks.

In line with this perspective, Perry and Wise (1990) proposed the concept of PSM, emphasizing the importance of PSM in attracting people to work in public organizations and increasing work performance. PSM can be defined as “the belief, values and attitudes that go beyond self-interest and organizational interest, that concern the interest of a larger political entity and that motivate individuals to act accordingly whenever appropriate” (Vandenabeele, 2007, p. 547). Vandenabeele (2013) further integrated PSM with SDT, indicating that the conception of PSM is positively correlated to autonomous types of self-regulation. Consistent with the propositions of Perry and Wise, empirical research has generally found that working in public organizations is correlated with higher levels of PSM (Mortimer & Lorence, 1979; Steijn, 2008), and that PSM is related to increased individual and organizational performance (Brewer & Selden, 2000; Kim, 2005; Naff & Crum, 1999). Research also indicates that increased PSM is related to less reliance on extrinsic motivation for the achievement of desirable organizational behavior (Crewson, 1997).

PSM is related to a propensity to pursue the public interest, for example, public managers with higher PSM are inclined to care more about public demands than self-interest (Perry, 1996). For example, prior research indicates that people with higher levels of PSM are not only attracted to government organizations but also to other public-serving activities and organizations, such as voluntary activities in schools or human services domains (Coursey, Brudney, Littlepage, & Perry, 2011). Thus, public managers with higher PSM are more likely to value activities that would fulfill the public interest and increase the general well-being of society. This leads us to expect that public managers with higher PSM will work to encourage citizen participation to ensure that government activities and services correspond to citizen demands, even when citizen participation may increase administrative costs and delay the decision-making process (Coursey, Yang, & Pandey, 2012).

Hypothesis 2: Managers’ PSM in Time 1 will be positively associated with citizen participation in government decision making in Time 2.

Despite the wide array of PSM research, the findings are inconclusive with regard to the explanatory power of PSM. For instance, a recent study conducted by Chen and Bozeman (2012) reports that public managers care about both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and that their extrinsic motivation is even stronger than their PSM. Meanwhile, using federal grade levels and performance ratings as a proxy to capture performance, Alonso and Lewis (2001) concluded that employees reporting higher levels of PSM are less effective. These contradictory findings on the impact of PSM may be explained by the observation that contextual factors other than an individual’s predisposition help to shape and explain behavior.

Recent studies have sought to integrate an institutional perspective into the study of PSM (Perry & Thomson, 2004; Vandenabeele, 2007), focusing on how PSM may be mediated by the degree of fit between the values and goals of individual and the organization (Bright, 2007, 2008; Gould-Williams, Mostafa, & Bottomley, 2015; Kim, 2012; Wright & Pandey, 2008). Given that individuals with higher PSM tend to hold prosocial values, it is reasonable to expect that those people will perceive higher degrees of person–organization fit when working in public organizations that serve the public interest. A meta-analytic review (Hoffman & Woehr, 2006) indicates that perceived person–organization fit tends to reinforce job performance and organizational citizenship, encouraging a sense of attachment and making individuals feel that their values are supported by the organization. Given these findings, we expect that the relationship between PSM and behavioral outcomes is contingent on the extent to which individuals and organizations hold similar values.

Prior empirical studies provide some evidence for our perspective. Bright (2008) argued that person–organization fit mediates the relationship between PSM and higher job satisfaction and lower turnover rates in the public sector. Similarly, Kim (2012) reported that PSM has a direct effect and an indirect effect on job satisfaction and organizational commitment through its influence on person–organization fit. Bright (2007) investigated work performance of 205 employees randomly sampled from a public health care agency, a city government, and a county jurisdiction in three states. He found that PSM is not a powerful predictor of public employees’ job performance when perceived person–organization fit is taken into account. Wright and Pandey (2008) also showed that value congruence between individuals and organizations mediates the impact of PSM on organizational performance. That is, the positive relationship between PSM and the achievement of organizational missions may be reduced if public managers perceive a poor alignment between the organization’s values and goals and their own values and goals. Accordingly, we posit that the relationship between PSM and citizen participation in local government decision making will be partially mediated by value congruence between managers and their organizations.

Hypothesis 3: The impact of PSM on citizen participation in government decision making will be partially mediated by value congruence between public managers and government organizations for which they work.

In addition to value congruence between individuals and organizations, the degree to which organizational incentive structures fit with managers’ predispositions is also relevant (Knoke & Wright-Isak, 1982; Steers & Porter, 1983), because extrinsic motivations may affect the positive impact of intrinsic motivations on inducing desirable behavior (Deci, 1971, 1975; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Frey & Jegen, 2001). SDT contends that extrinsic motivation, driven by coercion or external regulation, devastates intrinsic motivation by not allowing satisfaction of the basic psychological needs for competence and autonomy from the action (Deci, 1971, 1975; Deci & Ryan, 1985). In their meta-analysis, Deci et al. (1999) found that tangible rewards made contingent on task performance (e.g., performance rewards) undermine intrinsic motivation. People engage in behavior to achieve extrinsic outcomes rather than for the intrinsic motivators of the pleasure and satisfaction derived from the activity. If extrinsic motivation displaces intrinsic, there is the threat that once the extrinsic motivation disappears, there will be no motivation to conduct desirable behavior anymore. Similar to SDT, Frey and Jegen (2001) proposed motivation crowding theory, arguing that extrinsic motivation may substitute intrinsic motivation because reinforcement of extrinsic values implies that the organization has rejected the intrinsic value of the work.

The possible diminishing effect of extrinsic motivation on intrinsic motivation has recently grabbed the attention of public management scholars (Bregn, 2012; Chen & Hsieh, 2015; Forest, 2008; Moynihan, 2010). Moynihan (2010) argued that various forms of performance-based incentives adopted in government organizations may reduce PSM and thereby lead to a decrease in productivity, particularly when organizational outputs are hard to measure. Chen and Hsieh (2015) reported that the intention to pursue high pay is negatively related to PSM, though the relationship is attenuated for public managers who are satisfied with their pay level. This may explain why some empirical studies have found that pay-for-performance systems do not significantly enhance work performance in the public sector (Bertelli, 2006; Binderkrantz & Christensen, 2012; Kellough & Nigro, 2002).

We anticipate that performance-based reward systems may damage the positive effect of autonomous motivations, in particular PSM, on the degree of citizen participation in local government decision-making processes. When public managers with higher PSM work in a government organization that intends to facilitate work performance by providing contingent rewards, the performance-based reward systems may shift their motivations and behavior from the pursuit of the public interest, which often requires engagement with the public, to the maximization of extrinsic rewards and self-interests. Given that citizen participation often comes with an increase in administrative costs and burden, delay in decision making, and few to no extrinsic awards, the pursuit of extrinsic rewards may have a counterproductive effect on the PSM to facilitate better public governance via citizen participation in decision making.

Hypothesis 4: Public managers’ PSM is less likely to enhance citizen participation in government decision making as the level of adoption of performance-based rewards in government organizations increases.

In sum, this study intends to empirically test the extent to which performance-based rewards and PSM can effectively increase the level of citizen participation in local government decision-making processes. Moreover, we also aim to understand whether performance-based reward systems moderate the positive effect of PSM on citizen participation in local government decision making and whether value congruence mediates the positive effect of PSM on citizen participation. The hypothesized relationships are presented in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Conceptual model.

Data and Method

Data Source

The model and hypotheses are tested using data from two national surveys of local managers in the United States which were conducted in 2010 and 2012. The surveys were sponsored by the Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement (IPCE) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and were administered to a sample of 2,500 managers from 500 randomly selected cities with populations ranging from 25,000 to 250,000. Because the distribution of cities in the United States is highly skewed to smaller cities, the sample included a census of larger communities (100,000-250,000 population) and a proportional sample for smaller cities (25,000-99,999).¹

The survey was sent to 5 individuals in each of the 500 cities: city manager (or equivalent), deputy police chief, director of community development, director of finance, and director of parks and recreation. The survey administration focused on position in city government, so respondents were selected based on holding particular titles. The 2010 survey was administered to an adjusted sampling frame² of 2,380 individuals, of which 902 responded, for a response rate of 37.9%. The 2012 survey was completed by 845 of 2,428 eligible respondents, for a response rate of 34.8%.

Over the 2-year time period, some respondents only respond to a single year and other individuals were no longer working in the same position. We administered the survey to the same 5 positions in the same 500 cities; in 2012, 692 (27.7%) of the individuals in these positions were different from the individual who held the position in 2010. In total, we have data for 469 positions for both years, of which we eliminated 83 responses that were from different individuals for 2010 and 2012. The present analysis is limited to the 386 respondents who completed both the 2010 and the 2012 surveys. Of those 386 observations, those containing a missing value for the variables included in the analysis were removed using pairwise deletion because structural equation modeling requires complete data (Carter, 2006). The final number of observations is 302.³

Variables and Measure Validation

Endogenous variables

The main endogenous variable is Citizen Participation. This variable is captured using three questions from the 2012 survey which asked respondents to indicate, over the past year, how often members of the public contributed to their organizations by providing input on long-range plans, input on service priorities, and formal oversight of the organization (5-point Likert-type scale, 1 = never to 5 = very often). The Cronbach’s alpha for Citizen Participation is .79. The other endogenous variable in this analysis is Value Congruence. Value Congruence is measured using four questions from the 2012 survey which asked respondents to indicate their level of agreement with the following statements (5-point Likert-type scale, 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree): (a) There is not much to be gained by sticking with this organization indefinitely (reversely coded); (b) It would take very little change in my present circumstances to cause me to leave this organization (reversely coded); (c) I find that my values and the organization’s values are very similar; and (d) I am proud to tell others that I am part of this organization. The Cronbach’s alpha for Value Congruence is .78. It is important to note that our measures for Value Congruence capture subjective fit. Although there are some proponents of using objective fit measurement on value congruence (Edwards, 1994, 1996), we ask respondents to indicate how well their own characteristics fit with the organization. The subjective measure of fit on value congruence has been widely used by researchers in public administration (Kim, 2012; Steijn, 2008; Wright & Pandey, 2008).

Exogenous variables

The two exogenous variables of interest, Performance-based Rewards and Public Service Motivation, are measured in Time 1, 2010. Performance-based Rewards is measured using three questions from the 2010 survey asking respondents the degree to which they agree with the following statement about personnel procedures at their organizations (5-point Likert-type scale, 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree): (a) The formal pay structures and rules make it hard to reward a good employee with higher pay here (reversely coded); (b) Even if a manager is a poor performer, formal rules make it hard to remove him or her from the organization (reversely coded); and (c) Because of the rules here, promotions are based mainly on performance. The Cronbach’s alpha for Performance-based Rewards is .64.

Public Service Motivation is measured using seven questions, drawn from Perry (1996). The 2010 survey asked respondents to indicate the level of agreement with the following statements (5-point Likert-type scale, 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree): (a) I consider public service my civic duty; (b) I am willing to go to great lengths to fulfill my obligations to my country; (c) I believe everyone has a moral commitment to civic affairs no matter how busy they are; (d) It is my responsibility to help solve problems arising from interdependencies among people; (e) Meaningful public service is very important to me; (f) Public service is one of the highest forms of citizenship; and (g) I unselfishly contribute to my community. The Cronbach’s alpha for Public Service Motivation is .82.

Because the 2012 level of citizen participation is likely to be influenced by previous efforts for citizen participation, we include a measure for citizen participation in 2010. Past Citizen Participation is operationalized using three questions from the 2010 survey which indicate, over the past year, how often members of the public contributed to their organizations by providing input on long-range plans, input on service priorities, and formal oversight of the organization (5-point Likert-type scale, 1 = never to 5 = very often). The Cronbach’s alpha for Past Citizen Participation is .72.

We also expect that a legal requirement for citizen participation will be related to the level of citizen participation reported by local government managers. We thus include a variable Participation Law, which indicates whether respondent organizations are legally required to include citizen input in policy-making activities (1 = yes). Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics for all observed indicators included in the analysis.⁴

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics.

Constructs / Observed Indicators	Obs	Mean	SD	Min	Max
Citizen Participation (2012)
CP1: Provide input on long range plans	302	3.38	0.98	1	5
CP2: Provide input on service priorities	302	3.42	0.91	1	5
CP3: Provide formal oversight of your organization	302	2.64	1.17	1	5
Past Citizen Participation (2010)
PCP1: Provide input on long range plans	302	3.46	1.06	1	5
PCP2: Provide input on service priorities	302	3.48	0.90	1	5
PCP3: Provide formal oversight of your organization	302	2.30	1.18	1	5
Performance-based Rewards (2010)
ER1: The formal pay structures and rules make it hard to reward a good employee with higher pay here.	302	2.23	1.19	1	5
ER2: Even if a manager is a poor performer, formal rules make it hard to remove him or her from the organization.	302	2.67	1.22	1	5
ER3: Because of the rules here, promotions are based mainly on performance.	302	3.24	1.06	1	5
Public Service Motivation (2010)
PSM1: I consider public service my civic duty.	302	3.99	0.87	1	5
PSM2: I am willing to go to great lengths to fulfill my obligations to my country.	302	3.96	0.76	1	5
PSM3: I believe everyone has a moral commitment to civic affairs no matter how busy they are.	302	3.86	0.83	1	5
PSM4: It is my responsibility to help solve problems arising from interdependencies among people.	302	3.78	0.75	2	5
PSM5: Meaningful public service is very important to me.	302	4.32	0.62	2	5
PSM6: Public service is one of the highest forms of citizenship.	302	4.17	0.75	1	5
PSM7: I unselfishly contribute to my community.	302	3.90	0.60	2	5
Value Congruence (2012)
VC1: There’s not much to be gained by sticking with this organization indefinitely.	302	3.77	0.94	1	5
VC2: It would take very little change in my present circumstances to cause me to leave this organization.	302	3.86	0.94	1	5
VC3: I find that my values and the organization’s values are very similar.	302	3.96	0.86	1	5
VC4: I am proud to tell others that I am part of this organization.	302	4.35	0.76	1	5
Participation Law (2012)
PL1: Whether their organizations are legally required to include citizen input in policy-making activities.	302	0.48	0.50	0	1

We performed confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine measure validation for the variables (constructs) operationalized by multiple observed indicators. As Table 2 indicates, all factor loadings are greater than the recommended 0.5 cutoff and are statistically significant (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988), meaning that the selected observed indicators well represent the meaning of each of the constructs (latent variables). In terms of the overall model fit, the significant chi-square statistic with a value of 266.53 (df = 160, p < .001) indicates that the measurement model is not entirely adequate. A common criticism of the chi-square model test is that it is overly sensitive to sample size (Byrne, 2009; Ho, 2006), so other model fit indices should be examined. Comparative fit index (CFI) is greater than the 0.9 cutoff criterion (Hooper, Coughlan, & Mullen, 2008), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) and standardized root mean residual (SRMR) are around 0.5, suggesting that the measurement model represents an adequate fit to the data (Byrne, 2009). In addition, all the composite reliabilities (CRs) are either close to or greater than 0.7, and the average variance extracted (AVE) for all constructs ranges from 0.42 to 0.58 (Bagozzi & Yi, 1988), indicating that the convergent validity of the measurement model is acceptable.

Table 2.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis.

Constructs/Indicator Labels	Factor Loading	t value	CR	AVE	Cronbach’s α
Citizen Participation			0.80	0.58	0.79
CP1	0.86	17.27***
CP2	0.77	15.00***
CP3	0.63	11.71***
Past Citizen Participation			0.75	0.50	0.72
PCP1	0.83	15.43***
PCP2	0.72	13.25***
PCP3	0.55	9.65***
Performance-based Rewards			0.67	0.41	0.64
ER1	0.63	9.77***
ER2	0.76	11.11***
ER3	0.51	8.00***
Public Service Motivation			0.83	0.42	0.82
PSM1	0.64	12.04***
PSM2	0.56	10.20***
PSM3	0.69	13.22***
PSM4	0.53	9.54***
PSM5	0.73	14.29***
PSM6	0.79	16.00***
PSM7	0.50	9.00***
Value Congruence			0.78	0.48	0.78
VC1	0.62	11.22***
VC2	0.54	9.51***
VC3	0.80	15.28***
VC4	0.79	15.02***
Model Fit Indices
χ² = 266.53 (p = .000), df =160, χ²/df = 1.666
CFI = .95; RMSEA = .05; SRMR = .05

Note. CRs = composite reliabilities; AVE = average variance extracted; CFI = comparative fit index; RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation; SRMR = standardized root mean residual.

***

p < .001.

Analysis and Results

We perform a structural equation model using AMOS 20 to test the hypothesized relationships. Figure 2 presents the model fit and estimation results produced using the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) of a bootstrap sample. Although the significant chi-square statistic with a value of 320.455 (df = 178, p < .001) suggests a misfit between the observed data and model expectations, other model fit indices, including CFI (0.923), RMSEA (0.052), and SRMR (0.061), suggest that the hypothesized structural model reasonably fits the data. Squared multiple correlations for Citizen Participation in Time 2 is .555, meaning that the hypothesized model can explain about 56% variance in Citizen Participation in Time 2.

Figure 2.

Estimation results with all samples (n = 302).

An acceptable model fit allows us to further examine the hypothesized relationships among the four latent variables: Performance-based Rewards, Public Service Motivation, Value Congruence, and Citizen Participation. Hypothesis 1 expected that performance-based rewards would be negatively related to the level of citizen participation in local government decision making. As presented in Figure 2, Performance-based Rewards is negatively associated with Citizen Participation (Coefficient = −.131, p < .1), meaning that a higher level of performance-based rewards perceived by managers in Time 1 may lead to a reduction in citizen input in policy-making activities in Time 2. Despite relatively weak statistical significance, we find support for Hypothesis 1.

Our results support Hypothesis 2, which predicts that PSM will facilitate citizen participation in government decision making. As shown in Figure 2, Public Service Motivation is positively related to Citizen Participation at the significance level of 0.1 (Coefficient = .173, p < .1); public managers with higher PSM in Time 1 report a higher level of citizen participation in government decision making in Time 2.

Our analysis also provides support for Hypothesis 3. The extent to which PSM is related to citizen participation partially depends on the degree of value congruence between public managers and their workplaces. The MLE of a bootstrap sample indicates that there is a significant indirect effect of Public Service Motivation on Citizen Participation through Value Congruence (Coefficient = .054, p < .05). Our finding is consistent with Kim (2012) indicating that person–organization fit partially mediates that impact of PSM on behavioral outcomes.

Hypothesis 4 states that the adoption of performance-based reward systems will decrease the positive effect of PSM on citizen participation. To test the moderating effect of performance-based rewards, we perform multiple-group analysis (Byrne, 2009; Jöreskog, 1971; Kline, 2010). Respondents are first divided into two groups using K-means clustering analysis: high-performance reward group (n = 132) and low-performance reward group (n = 170). The result of independent-samples t test reports that the two groups vary significantly regarding their perceptions of performance-based rewards at their organizations (M difference = 1.44, p < .001). Respondents in the high-performance reward group perceived a higher level of performance-based rewards than those in the low-performance reward group. The default model where the regression path from Public Service Motivation to Citizen Participation is not fixed to be equal between the two groups is compared with the moderating model where the path coefficient is fixed to be equal between the two groups. A significant chi-square difference between the two models indicates that the regression path from Public Service Motivation to Citizen Participation significantly varies between the high- and low-performance reward groups. Otherwise, the impact of PSM on citizen participation tends to be unrelated to perceived performance-based rewards in an organization.

Figures 3 and 4 present regression estimations for the high-performance reward group and the low-performance reward group, respectively. In the high-performance reward group, Public Service Motivation is positively related to Citizen Participation at the significance level of 0.1 (Coefficient = .194, p < .1). In the low-performance reward group, PSM is positively associated with Citizen Participation while the path coefficient is not statistically significant (Coefficient = .147, p = .269). These results seem to indicate that perceived performance-based rewards may reinforce the positive relationship between PSM and citizen participation in government decisions instead of reducing the association with PSM. However, the chi-square difference test for the default and moderating model is not significant, Δχ²(1) = .073, p = .788, meaning that there is no significant moderating effect of perceived performance-based rewards. Our analysis does not provide evidence for the diminishing effect of extrinsic motivation on autonomous motivation, and thus we find no support for Hypothesis 4.

Figure 3.

Estimation results with the sample of high-performance rewards (n = 132).

Figure 4.

Estimation results with the sample of low-performance rewards (n = 170).

As we would expect, Past Citizen Participation is positively related to Citizen Participation in all three models with all samples, the high-performance reward group and low-performance reward group (p < .001). Participation Law is also positively associated with Citizen Participation, although the impact becomes negative in the model of the high-performance reward group. However, the impact of Participation Law is only significant in the model with the sample of perceived low-performance rewards.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study investigates the relationships between local government managers’ extrinsic and autonomous motivations and the facilitation of citizen participation in government decision making, providing a deeper understanding of how public managers’ motivations are related to citizen participation activities. Theoretically, both extrinsic and autonomous motivations should induce desirable organizational behavior. Thus, when public managers perceive that they will be rewarded for good performance, which should include serving the public interest, we might expect managers to welcome public participation in government decision making because satisfying public demands are an important component of government duties in a democratic society. However, our analysis indicates that there might be a reverse effect of performance-based rewards on citizen participation. Extrinsic motivation, here measured as perceived performance-based rewards in organizations, is negatively related to citizen participation in local government decision making. As indicated in Frey et al. (2013), the extent to which extrinsic rewards can contribute to desirable behavior is contingent upon the characteristics of the tasks conducted. Output-based performance rewards may have a reverse influence if the underlying tasks aim to serve diverse goals and are difficult to measure.

We also find that local government managers with higher PSM report greater levels of citizen participation in organizational decision making. Our study informs that autonomous motivation, like PSM, may be more important for enhancing responsiveness of public managers. In line with prior studies (Bright, 2007, 2008; Coursey et al., 2012; Wright & Pandey, 2008), our analysis shows that the positive influence of PSM on citizen participation is mediated by person–organization value congruence. This result suggests the importance for government organizations to develop culture and values that are consistent with public values and goals so that public managers with high PSM will be more willing to engage the public in government decision making.

We take a step further from current motivation studies to examine whether extrinsic motivation reinforces or decreases the impact of PSM on engaging citizens in local government decision making. While some researchers expect that extrinsic and intrinsic incentives are additive in their effect on enhancing work performance (Porter & Lawler, 1968; Vroom, 1964), others point out that extrinsic rewards may diminish the influence of PSM on inducing desirable organizational behavior (Bregn, 2012; Forest, 2008; Moynihan, 2010). To our knowledge, the diminishing effect has not been empirically tested in the public administration research. Our analysis finds that perceived performance-based rewards in an organization have neither positive nor negative effects on the impact of PSM on citizen participation in government decision making. That is, the impact of PSM on citizen participation is statistically unrelated to perceived performance-based rewards in an organization. There are two possible explanations for this unexpected finding. First, dividing the respondents into two groups—high- and low-performance rewards—rules out the possibility that perceived organizational performance rewards may moderate the relationship between PSM and citizen participation in a nonlinear way. Because the sample size should be at least 5 times greater than the number of free parameters in structural equation modeling (Bentler & Chou, 1987), comparing more than two groups is not manageable for our study.

Second, our data encounters an attrition problem, which may lead to biased causal inferences from respondents. Around 57% of the public managers who responded to the 2010 survey did not respond to the 2012 survey. Although our analysis shows that there is no severe systematic attrition, we should use caution when interpreting the findings. Due to these limitations, we call for future research to investigate and understand the complex relationship between extrinsic motivations such as performance-based rewards and autonomous motivation in public management.

In sum, this study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, we test whether different types of motivations, performance-based rewards and PSM, have a significant impact on citizen participation in local government across two points of time. Although we are not able to control the impact of time-invariant variables, which may be determined long before Time 1, this study, to some degree, improves the weaknesses of most PSM research which relies on cross-sectional studies (Wright & Grant, 2010). Second, our findings provide some reflection on the perspective of the NPM calling for the development of a system that holds public employees accountable through performance evaluation. In line with Moynihan (2010), we argue that performance-contingent rewards, or punishment, may not be able to induce desirable organizational behavior, particularly when organizational outputs are public values which may be difficult to measure or capture within a short term. For government agencies, it is probably more important to design a system that can help cultivate PSM among employees, foster the values of citizen participation and interaction with the public, and ensure that organizational missions align with individual value perspectives.

Footnotes

Appendix

Appendix A

Estimation Results Using Weighted Data

			All samples		Sample of high-performance rewards		Sample of low-performance rewards
			Estimate	p value	Estimate	p value	Estimate	p value
Direct effect
citizen participation	←	performance-based rewards	−0.127	.109
citizen participation	←	public service motivation	0.231	.011	0.220	.006	0.235	.015
citizen participation	←	value congruence	0.187	.037	0.425	.001	0.102	.171
citizen participation	←	past citizen participation	0.646	***	0.692	***	0.577	***
citizen participation	←	participation law	0.099	.285	−0.216	.015	0.312	***
value congruence	←	public service motivation	0.252	***	0.122	.014	0.365	***
Indirect effect
citizen participation	←	public service motivation	0.047	.023	0.052	.012	0.037	.164
		χ²	p value	df	χ²/df	CFI	RMSEA	SRMR
Model with all sample		337.276	***	178	1.895	0.916	0.055	0.063
Model with the sample of high-performance rewards		507.755	***	128	3.967	0.813	0.099	0.083
Model with the sample of low-performance rewards		396.026	***	128	3.094	0.862	0.083	0.068

Note. CFI = comparative fit index; RMSEA = root mean square error of approximation; SRMR = standardized root mean residual.

***

p < .001.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Wan-Ling Huang is Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration at Tamkang University, Taiwan. Her research interests include science and technology policy, organizational theory and behavior, and environment policy.

Mary K. Feeney is Associate Professor and Lincoln Professor of Ethics in Public Affairs at ASU. Her research focuses on public management, nonprofit management, and technology in government. Her new book is Nonprofit Organizations & Civil Society in the United States (co-author Kelly LeRoux, Routledge, 2014).

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