Explaining Citizen Surveys Non-Adoption in Local Government

In order to measure the outcomes of service delivery activities public administrators often relies on citizen surveys. At the same time citizen surveys have been severely criticized and labelled ad useless and unreliable. Drawing on available literature, the aim of this paper is to explore the antecedents of the decision to adopt those tools from the decision maker point of view. Data were collected through questionnaires sent to a sample of Italian town mayors. Results particularly emphasize public officials’ perception that surveys are often useless for their decision process. On the other side findings do not support the hypothesis that surveys are not conducted because they are believed to be as not reliable as objective indicators. Results are discussed and managerial implications are drawn.