The impact of public participation and service quality on the performance of Abu Dhabi's municipalities

Abstract

Municipalities in Abu Dhabi are facing many hindrances in providing service quality to the public. Among the critical factor noted is poor public participation in local government decision-making process. Therefore, this study evaluates the degree of public participation in the decision-making process in local government in Abu Dhabi. The impact of public participation on the perception of service quality in local government was also examined. In addition, this study also compares the differences in the perception of service quality between customers and local government officials. The target population consisted of local management who were working as administrative officials, and customers who received the services of the local government. More than 600 questionnaires were collected from both customers and officials of over three municipalities in Abu Dhabi. To analyses the data by using SPSS 22.0 and AMOS. The results showed that the degree of decision-making participation occurred at a high level in a goal setting process. There was a significant positive impact between public participation and the perception of service quality of the local government officials. In addition, it showed that the gap in the perception of service quality was higher for the customer group compared to that of the local government officials. Moreover, this study revealed that there were significant differences in customers’ perception of service quality between the types of municipality and the locations of the municipality. As such, in order to increase service quality, it is recommended for all types of municipalities to increase efforts to enhance public participation in their decision-making process.