| dc.description.abstract | Norwegian municipalities use varying degrees of competition and market mechanisms to organize the renovation service. Among the municipalities that choose to make use of these local reform types, the desire for increased efficiency and reduced costs are the biggest motivational factors. The literature, on the other hand, offers little on how a municipality organizes its renovation services affects citizen satisfaction, and where it does, the research tends to focus on the social services. In this paper I address the theories of public choice and principal agent with an emphasis on how New Public Management (NPM) has gained inspiration from this school. The literature raises doubts about hierarchical organization and, among other factors, looks at competition as a means of reducing spending and increasing efficiency. I try to find answers to whether citizens of municipalities using competitive tendering, public-private cooperation and benchmarking are more satisfied with the renovation services, and we use refuse collection and source separation as measurements.
The research question is primarily analyzed with multilevel modeling, which allows us to analyze effects both on an individual and municipal level, as well as provide a better understanding of variations in public satisfaction between municipalities. The analysis shows that there are few statistically significant differences between municipalities that make use of market elements in the production of renovation services and those that do not. I therefore raise doubt around the expectations of better welfare services as a result of NPM inspired reforms.
The data is collected from the Agency for Public Management and eGovernments (Difi) “Citizen Survey 2017” and from the “Survey on Municipal Organization 2016” delivered by the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR). | nb_NO |
