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CITIZENS' SATISFACTION WITH PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES AT THE WARD PEOPLE’S COMMITTEES OF TAY HO DISTRICT A Dissertation Submitted to Thai Nguyen University of Economics and Business Administration and Central Philippine University Joint Program In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION By HOANG VAN HAO December 2016 i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It is hard to imagine how this dissertation could have been completed without the encouragement and support from my academic supervisor, family and friends. Firstly, I wish to thank my academic supervisor, Dr. Reynaldo Dusaran. It is my honor to receive his guide, suggestions and feedbacks on each chapter with great patience. Although we live in two different countries, the academic discussion has not been influenced. Both direct and indirect meetings between us have been really effective. These have helped me improve my expertise and insights, which finally has improved the quality of this study. I am also deeply grateful to my family, who has provided me with unconditional support throughout the whole process. Over the last four years, I have two sons. My wife has taken the responsibility of taking care of our sons. She has never complained about it so that I can fully focus on studying. Furthermore, she has read and given valuable opinions about this dissertation so that the content is expressed more precisely and professionally. Next, I would like to send my gratitude to my parents. They have helped much in looking after our sons. I am deeply indebted to my parents as they provided such help while they were in worse health than before. My parents have only heard about the university from us, but they have been always ready to try their best to ensure my sisters' educational quality as well as mine. Finally, I would like to thank my friends who have shared their research experience, especially in collecting and analyzing the data. I also send my loyal thanks to my peers in this PhD course who have brought to me many more experiences in study, work and life as well. I really look forward to working with them in the future. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i LIST OF FIGURES iv LIST OF TABLES v ABSTRACT vii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 Background and Rationale of the Study 3 Objectives of the Study 7 Hypotheses 7 Theoretical Framework 8 Conceptual Framework 15 Operational Definitions 19 Significance of the Study 24 Scope and Limitations 25 II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE AND STUDIES 27 Service Quality 27 Customers Satisfaction 35 Public Administrative Service and Citizens’ Satisfaction 37 Related Studies 41 iii III. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 46 Research Design 46 Population, Sample Size and Sampling Technique 48 Research Instruments 50 Data Gathering Procedure 59 Data Processing and Analysis 60 IV. DATA PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION Respondents’ Characteristics 62 62 Respondents’ Perception of the Components of the Public Administrative Services 67 Respondents’ Perception of Satisfaction with Public Administrative Services 71 Differences in Citizens’ Perception of Public Administrative Services and Satisfaction according to their Personal Characteristics 72 Relationship between Citizens’ Perception of Public Administrative Services and their Satisfaction V. SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 83 90 Summary of the Key Findings 91 Conclusions 93 Recommendations 96 REFERENCES 108 APPENDIXES 114 iv LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE PAGE 1 Measuring Service Quality using SERVQUAL Model 12 2 Performance Only Model (SERVPERF) 14 3 Conceptual Framework of the Study 18 4 Conceptual Framework of the Study (Adjusted after EFA) 19 5 The Nordic Model by Gronroos 30 6 The Kano Model 33 7 Research Process 47 v LIST OF TABLES TABLE PAGE 1 List of Variables and Initial Items in the Survey Instrument 51 2 Results of Reliability Test of Scales 54 3 Result of the Seventh EFA with Scales of Independent Variables 56 4 Result of EFA for Citizens’ Satisfaction 57 5 Names and Abbreviations of Variables after EFA 58 6 Distribution of Respondents as to their Characteristics 64 Distribution of Respondents as to Information Related to the Use of 66 7 8 Public Administrative Services Descriptive Statistics of the Different Items and Components of Public 70 Administrative Services 9 Descriptive Statistics for Different Items of Citizens’ Satisfaction 72 10 Mean Scores on the Different Components of Public Administrative 73 Services and Satisfaction by Gender 11 Mean Scores on the Different Components of Public Administrative 74 Services and Satisfaction by Age 12 Mean Scores on the Different Components of Public Administrative 75 Services and Satisfaction by Marital Status 13 Mean Scores on the Different Components of Public Administrative 76 Services and Satisfaction by Educational Attainment 14 Mean Scores on the Different Components of Public Administrative 77 Services and Satisfaction by Occupation 15 Mean Scores on the Different Components of Public Administrative Services and Satisfaction by Income 79 vi 16 Mean Scores on the Different Components of Public Administrative 80 Services and Satisfaction by Frequency of Use Mean Scores on the Different Components of Public Administrative 17 Services and Satisfaction by Acquaintances in Ward People’s 81 Committees 18 Mean Scores on the Different Components of Public Administrative 82 Services and Satisfaction by Paying Extra Fee 19 Mean Scores on the Different Components of Public Administrative 83 Services and Satisfaction by Residence 20 Regression Results for Citizens’ Satisfaction 86 vii ABSTRACT CITIZENS' SATISFACTION WITH PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES AT THE WARD PEOPLE’S COMMITTEES OF TAY HO DISTRICT HOANG VAN HAO This study was conducted to evaluate the citizens' satisfaction with public administrative services at the Ward People’s Committees of Tay Ho District. The one-shot survey design or the post-test only design was used to gather data from 440 randomly selected respondents allocated proportionately to the eight wards of Tay Ho District. The survey instrument was tested for its reliability using the Cronbach’s Alpha. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to reduce the number of items and factors from the initial seven factors with 33 items to five factors with 27 items after the EFA. The instrument was translated to Vietnamese to allow easy understanding of the respondents and distributed to the randomly selected respondents. All the data collected were processed using SPSS 20. Analysis made use of descriptive statistics and Multiple Regression Analysis, t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to test the hypotheses of the study. The study revealed that most if not the majority of the respondents were females, not more than 45 years old, married, university educated , working as employee, civil servant or freelancer; and with a monthly income of 3 to 5M VND. The majority of the respondents were occasional users of public administrative services, without acquaintances in the Ward People’s Committee, have not paid extra fee to avail of the services and residents of the ward where they avail the public administrative services. The respondents generally have “Good” perception of viii the different components of the public administrative services and have “high” perceived satisfaction of the public administrative services. There were no significant differences in the perception of the respondents of the different components of public administrative services and their satisfaction according to their gender, age, marital status, income, acquaintances in the Ward People’s Committee, payment of extra fee and residence. However, significant differences were observed according to educational attainment, occupation and frequency of use of public administrative services. All the five components of public administrative services were found to be significant determinants of satisfaction. Civil servants’ capacity and public-duty ethics appeared to be the major determinant followed by time and cost and facilities while transaction and process of delivery showed to be the least. 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Public administrative reform is an urgent as well as a lasting duty in order to step by step build a clear and strong public administration which serves efficiently and promotes greatly the process of reforming and developing the country. Administrative procedures are an indispensable part in our social life. It is also a tool of the state in administering the society and serving both organizations and individuals. After fifteen years since the application of the comprehensive public administrative reform program, the carrying out of administrative reform has had many positive changes, which have been supported by most of the public. Basing on this, Hanoi People’s Committee in general and Tay Ho District People’s Committee in particular, always set the requirement that they should complete and improve the quality of serving citizens and operate the administrative activities stably, quickly, effectively and legally. Administrative procedure reform is not only one of the administrative reform sectors but also the main program of the country. The carrying out of administrative procedure simplification scheme on the fields of state management from 2007 to 2010 (Scheme 30) has importantly contributed to enhance the business environment, socioeconomic life and the process of global integration. Vietnam is continuing to promote the program of reforming the administrative procedure in the period of 2010 - 2020 according to the Governmental resolution, in which the duty of administrative procedure reform is focused. Between 2011 and 2015, the administrative procedure reform has been 2 implemented to continue enhancing the business environment, boost all the social resources and improve the competitiveness ability of the country, maintain the conditions for the state economy to develop fast and sustainably. Hanoi City has been focusing on this recently in order to contribute to the improvement of the citizens’ life standard, reduce the money and time waste, which makes the public feel more satisfied and closer when working with state agencies. Nowadays, the duty of administrative reform in Tay Ho District has created the standards in the way of serving the citizens, especially in the fields, according to the “OneStop-Shop” (OSS) mechanism, with a more clearly and simply built system of procedures. In the wards, the enterprises as well as the citizens are offered the convenience and ease in some tasks which need to be acted by state agencies such as notarization, business registration, procedures of civil status and law surveying. Administrative procedure reform has contributed to changing management and leadership thinking and the process of supervising and administering in administrative agencies, thus, improving the capacity, validity and effectiveness of state administrative practices. Since its establishment in 1995, Tay Ho District has always paid attention to the task of reforming the administrative procedures at the grassroots level. Eights wards belonging to this district have had many improvements and positive changes in the administrative machinery. However, it is hard to tell whether or not the citizens are really satisfied with the results of the current administrative reform. The enterprises as well as the citizens have still had troubles and nuisances in many fields such as asking for estate or accommodation ownership right, allowing construction and so on. Therefore, the renewal of delivering public administrative services and improvement of the delivery quality at the 3 grassroots level are crucial. Besides the function of state management, the serving function of the state aims at providing necessary services for the citizens so that they can carry out their rights and duties appropriately is now given more attention than before. As a consequence, the question as to how to evaluate the public administrative service quality as well as the citizens’ satisfaction is still raised. Thus, the researcher decided to choose the study entitled, “Citizens' Satisfaction with Public Administrative Services at the Ward People’s Committees of Tay Ho District”. In this study, the author aims at determining and evaluating the citizens’ satisfaction with the delivery of the public administrative services at the wards belonging to Tay Ho District at present. Also, this investigation is carried out to find out the solutions to enhancing the quality of public services at grassroots level with a hope to create more citizens’ satisfaction with public administrative services; so that the citizens’ trust for the State management agencies can be enhanced. Background and Rationale of the Study Few would disagree with the premise that citizens want to be satisfied when interacting with government. According to Oliver (1997:10), satisfaction itself was defined as “a desirable end state of consumption and patronization” and “a reinforcing, pleasurable experience.” Although this was mentioned by Oliver from a customer’s perspective, this argument undoubtedly could be applied to citizens. Life satisfaction of citizens should be a worthy goal for government. In the academic researches on citizens’ satisfaction with government services, while the emphases and perspectives kept varying (e.g., the ideal proxy for or measure of 4 satisfaction, models identifying process of the formation of satisfaction attitudes, the primary outcomes of citizens’ satisfaction, to name a few), a popular theme penetrating a majority of these works on this topic adopted the “performance - satisfaction - trust (or confidence)” conceptual linkage (Bouckaert, Van de Walle, & Kampen, 2005; Fornell, Johnson, Anderson, Cha, & Bryant, 1996; Heintzman & Marson, 2005; Van Ryzin, 2007). Once satisfaction was determined, it in turn served as the main predictor of a series of positive outcomes such as citizen trust on and confidence in government. Despite the gained important results, public administration reform and administrative procedure reform when compared to the requirements of the process of innovation, socio-economic development and international integration, the speed of administrative procedure reform has remained slow and not very effective. Public administration has revealed some drawbacks. The administrative procedures have not been simplified thoroughly. The clarity and openness have been still low; many administrative procedures have still been improper, complex and troublesome to agencies as well as citizens. The organization of the state administrative apparatus has been still bulky with many hierarchies. The rankings in branches and fields between the centre and region and among the local government levels have been still slow and not very distinctive in functions, duties and the organization in the urban government with the rural one. The civil service records of public servants are slowly compiled. The quality of officials has not met the demands of innovation and socio-economic development. The public service staffs are still not very good at new management skill; also lack the flair and their responsibility for implementing their duty is not high. 5 One area of public services that has been provided by the state is the performing of necessary public administrative tasks such as birth and death registration, armed forces enlistment, marriage registration, passport and identity card issue, licenses, patents, permits for activities relating to public order, and so on. The administrative procedures in Vietnam are institutionalized in various legal documents, especially the Government Resolution No. 38/CP of May 4, 1994, on reforming administrative procedures in the settlement of affairs of citizens and organizations, Prime Minister Decision No. 136/2001/QD-TTg of September 17, 2001, on approving the overall program on state administration reform in the 2001- 2010 period and Government Resolution No 30C/2011/NQ-CP of November 08, 2011, on the overall program on state administration reform in the 2011- 2020 period. At present, the administrative procedural relationship between the government and citizens is through the use of the new mechanism OSS and Inter-agency OSS (Inter-sector/Inter-level OSS). The administrative reform has been carried out in Vietnam for more than twenty years. The reform of administrative procedures is considered as a breakthrough because they are directly related to the exercise of power by state administrators and to the rights and legitimate interests of individuals and organizations. Moreover, the administrative procedures are seen as the weakest link in Vietnamese administration. Tay Ho District is an administrative unit of Hanoi established by Decree No. 69/CP of the Government issued 28/10/1995. The People’s Committee of Tay Ho District in recent years have had many advances in improving the quality of public administrative service delivery, which concerns the public more than before. At the same time, applying the administration and operation mechanism of quality management system according to 6 ISO 9001:2008 with a hope to providing the best service, creating favorable conditions for the citizens and improve the effectiveness of public administration. However, to evaluate the citizens’ satisfaction, Tay Ho District only participated with Hanoi City to carry out a survey in a city general programme without having an independent survey. For each district, Hanoi City selected only a unit (a commune, a ward or a township) to collect the opinions. Therefore, determining the citizens’ satisfaction towards the public administrative service at the wards belonging to Tay Ho District on a larger scale (only referring to grassroots level) to solve the current drawbacks is a meaningful research since the district and ward authorities have had many advances in reforming activities towards the citizens. As a result, public administrative agencies should understand and propose more practical solutions to meet the reasonable aspirations and benefits of the citizens on the basis of implementing the social administrative functions and duties of local authorities. This study will carry out an evaluation of the citizens' satisfaction with the public administrative services at grassroots level, which is a case study at Tay Ho District - Hanoi (the delivery of the Ward People’s Committees). This study is carried out to address these following research questions: - How do citizens perceive public administrative services at the Ward People’s Committees of Tay Ho District? - What are the factors related to citizens’ satisfaction with public administrative services at grassroots level? - What are some recommendations for promoting the quality of public administrative services at grassroots level as well as improving the citizens’ satisfaction? 7 Objectives of the Study It was the main objective of the study to evaluate the citizens' satisfaction with public administrative services at the Ward People’s Committees of Tay Ho District. Specifically, the study intends to: i. determine the citizens’ perceptions of components of public administrative services delivery at the Ward People’s Committees of Tay Ho District; ii. determine the citizens’ satisfaction of the public administrative services at the Ward People’s Committees of Tay Ho District; iii. examine the differences in the citizens’ perceptions of components of public administrative services and the difference in the citizens’ satisfaction according to their personal characteristics; iv. determine the relationship between the citizens’ perceptions of the components of public administrative services at the Ward People’s Committees of Tay Ho District and the citizens’ satisfaction (using personal characteristics as control variables); v. propose recommendations to promote the reform of administrative procedures, improve the quality of public administrative services at grassroots level, and improve the citizens’ satisfaction. Hypotheses Based on the inferential objectives of the study, the following hypotheses will be tested: 8 H1. There are no significant differences in the satisfaction of the citizens with public administrative services at the Ward People’s Committee of Tay Ho District according to their personal characteristics like gender, age, marital status, educational attainment, occupation and monthly income, frequency of use, relationship, extra fee payment and residence; H2. There are no significant differences in the citizens’ perceptions of components of public administrative services at the Ward People’s Committee of Tay Ho District according to their personal characteristics; H3. There is no significant relationship between the citizens’ perceptions of components of public administrative services and the citizens’ satisfaction with the public administrative services at the Ward People’s Committee of Tay Ho District; Theoretical Framework The topic of this dissertation is mainly focused on service quality and customer satisfaction. So in this section, the dissertation proposal will review two models of measurement of service quality and customer satisfaction. SERVQUAL Model. The concept of SERVQUAL model is generally based on gap theory of Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985), which suggests that “the difference between customers assessment of the actual performance of a specific firm within a general class of service providers and their expectation about the performance of that class (P-E gap) drives the perception of service quality.” Service quality = Perception (of the attribute performance) - Customer expectation (of the attribute performance) 9 k SQi = Wj ( Pij  Eij ) j 1 Where: SQi = SERVQUAL overall perceived quality of stimulus i k = the number of attributes Wj = a weighting factor if attributes have differentiated weights. Pij = Performance perception of stimulus i with respect to attribute j. Eij = Service quality expectation for attribute j that is the relevant norm for stimulus i. In 1985, Parasuraman and his associates developed a conceptual model of service quality where they identified five gaps that could impact the consumer’s evaluation of service quality in four different industries. These gaps were: Gap 1: Consumer expectation - Management perception gap Service firms may not always understand what features a service must have in order to meet consumers’ needs and what levels of performance on those features are needed to deliver high quality services. This results in affecting the way consumers evaluate service quality. Gap 2: Management perception - Service quality specification gap This gap arises when the company identifies what the consumers want but the means to deliver the expectation does not exist. Some factors that affect this gap could be resource constraints, market conditions and management indifference. These could affect service quality perception of the consumers. Gap 3: Service quality specifications - Service delivery gap 10 Companies could have guidelines for performing service well and treating consumers properly but these do not mean high service quality performance is assured. Employees play an important role in assuring good service quality perception and their performance cannot be standardized. This affects the delivery of service which has an impact on the way consumers perceive service quality. Gap 4: Service delivery - External communications gap External communications can affect not only consumer expectations of service but also consumer perceptions of the delivered service. Companies can neglect to inform consumers of special efforts to assure quality that are not visible to them and this could influence service quality perceptions by consumers. Gap 5: Expected Service - Perceived service gap From their study, it has showed that the key to ensuring good service quality is meeting or exceeding what consumers expect from the service and that judgement of high and low service quality depends on how consumers perceive the actual performance in the context of what they expected. SERVQUAL Dimensions. In 1988, Parasuraman, Berry and Zeithaml SERVQUAL instrument consists of 22 attributes which can be classified into 5 dimensions: assurance, tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, and empathy. The bases was on capturing the gap between customers’ expectations and experience which could be negative or positive if the expectation is higher than experience or expectation is less than or equal to experience, respectively. These five dimensions are also known as RATER model with the arrangement of Reliability, Assurance, Tangibles, Empathy, and Responsiveness. The explanation of each dimension is as follows: 11 - Reliability dimension: reflects the consistency and dependability of a firm’s performance. In order to assess the service performance on this dimension, some questions can be asked such as does the firm provide the same level of service time after time, or does quality dramatically vary with each encounter? Does the firm keep its promises, bill its customers accurately, keep accurate records, and perform the service correctly the first time? - Assurance dimension: addresses the competence of a firm, the courtesy it extends to its customers, and the security of the service. This dimension refers to how a firm’s personnel interact with customers and customers’ possession such as courtesy reflect politeness, friendliness, and consideration for the customers’ property. - Tangibility dimension: given the absence of a physical product, customers often rely on the tangible evidence that surrounds the service in forming evaluation. This dimension includes variety of objects such as desks, lighting, wall color, brochures, appearance of firm’s personnel, etc. - Empathy dimension: is the ability of the firm’s personnel to experience customers feeling as their own. Empathic firms understand their customers’ needs and make their service accessible to customers. - Responsiveness dimension: reflects the commitment of a firm to provide its services in a timely manner. This dimension concerns the willingness and readiness of personnel to provide a service. It reflects the preparedness of the firm to provide the service.