Abstract:

The practice of public administration in contemporary China is transforming from “Government-Centered” to “People-Centered”, and improving service performance has become a meaningful way to enhance citizens’ sense of gain and satisfaction. This is also one of the core topics of public administration research in the Post-New Public Management period. Does high objective performance bring about high citizen satisfaction? Previous studies have formed two competing views. Considering the digital transformation of government in China, this study takes Zhejiang Province’s “Visit Once” reform as the scenario and uses the survey experiment method to explore the impact of objective performance on citizen satisfaction. It also tests how the transformation of service delivery mode from offline to online shapes the relationship between performance and satisfaction. The results show that high objective performance leads to high citizen satisfaction, but when the service delivery mode changes from offline to online, the same high objective performance does not bring higher citizen satisfaction. It indicates that under digital transformation, the government can improve citizen satisfaction by advancing its objective performance, but the shift of service supply from offline to online cannot naturally bring higher satisfaction. The government needs to pay more attention to the design of online services to reduce users’ costs and the unequal distribution of satisfaction that online service supply may aggravate.

Key words: citizen satisfaction, objective performance, online service delivery, digital transformation