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Title
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Closing the performance-satisfaction gap with direct public communication
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Author
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Abstract
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| Better performance does not always lead to higher citizen satisfaction. Academics have argued that this so-called performance-satisfaction gap is often due to a lack of accurate information. Introducing social media offers opportunities for public sector organizations to communicate information to users directly. Especially Twitter has become an essential medium for public organizations to inform and interact directly with service users. In this study, we hypothesize that when controlling for actual performance, starting with online public communication on Twitter will positively affect satisfaction (measured as Twitter sentiment). Using the case of the Belgian railway company, we implement a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design from 2010 to 2018. A significant reduction in negative tweets could be observed after 2013 when the railway company started communicating directly on Twitter. This research brings new insights into the effectiveness of public communication through social media while controlling for an objective performance indication. Furthermore, this study employs a novel method with supervised machine learning-based classification of tweets. |
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Language
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English
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Source (book)
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EGPA conference, 6-9 September, 2022, Lisbon, Portugal
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Publication
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2022
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Volume/pages
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p. 1-17
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