Does “Satisfaction†with Local Public Services Affect Complaints (Voice) and Geographic Mobility (Exit)?

Paul Devereux and Burton A. Weisbrod
Additional contact information
Burton A. Weisbrod: Northwestern University

Public Finance Review, 2006, vol. 34, issue 2, 123-147

Abstract: Political systems may respond not only to elections but also to expressions of dissatisfaction through complaints and geographic mobility. Understanding the implications of citizen dissatisfaction with local public services is the goal of this article, which examines empirically two forms of consequences of dissatisfaction—complaints to governmental agencies and decisions to move. The authors find that dissatisfied individuals are more likely to complain and to plan to move and that these two courses of action appear to be substitutes. An implication of the findings that stated dissatisfaction does have predictable behavioral consequences is that survey data on satisfaction with public services have information content that has been underappreciated in economics research.

Keywords: satisfaction; complaints; geographic mobility; exit; voice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1091142105282963 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:34:y:2006:i:2:p:123-147

DOI: 10.1177/1091142105282963

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Public Finance Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().