Citizen Participation in Local Government Decision Making: The Role of Manager Motivation

Engaging the public in government decision making is an important value and priority in a democratic society. Although there is research investigating public perceptions of citizen participation opportunities and efforts, little research focuses on understanding the motivations that public managers have to encourage citizen participation. This research seeks to understand the ways in which public managers’ motivations are related to engaging the public in organizational decision making. We use data from two national surveys of U.S. local government managers conducted in 2010 and 2012 to investigate the extent to which performance-based rewards and public service motivation (PSM) contribute to citizen participation in government decision making and examine the ways in which the relationship between PSM and citizen participation is moderated by performance-based rewards and mediated by value congruence. The results indicate that performance-based rewards are negatively related to citizen participation in government decision making whereas PSM is positively related to citizen participation both directly and indirectly through person–organization value congruence.