Marketisation Reforms and Coproduction: Does Ownership of Service Delivery Structures and Customer Language Matter?

Abstract

Public services that are tax funded, public goods are sometimes marketised by being delivered using private companies instead of public organisations. Additionally, marketisation reforms can entail service users being described as customers for the service rather than as citizens.We assess the effects of these aspects of marketisation reforms on users’ willingness to coproduce public services. First, service delivery using private companies risksreducing users’ willingness to coproduce because firms cannot commit ex-ante to not appropriate donated labour for private gain. Second, using customer-oriented language risks reductions by priming individualistic market-norms that lower prosocial motivation compared to citizen-oriented language priming citizenship duty. Using three survey experiments in the United States we find that delivery structures are not neutral. Private firms delivering local public services reduce users’ willingness to coproduce, although similar effects are not evident from primimg customer rather than citizenship thinking.