Multichannel strategies in public services: levels of satisfaction and citizens’ preferences

This work analyzes the behavior of two variables which can determine the use of different channels available to citizens to access public services (face-to-face, mail, phone and Internet). To do so, we will go deeply into the knowledge of the elements which determine the citizens’ satisfaction with face-to-face administration, as well as variables (gender and age) which can moderate the level of satisfaction with the different channels. We also analyze the citizen’s preference for the distribution channel, studying the moderator role which gender, age, marital status, religious beliefs and employment status can play in this. Use is made of data from the 2014 survey of CIS (Spain’s Center of Sociological Investigations) with a sample of 2479 people. The results indicate the presence of a moderator effect of gender and age on the face-to-face and phone channels but not on the rest. In the case of preference, all the variables analyzed moderate the level of preference for the different channels.