Co-Production of Public Services in Australia: The Roles of Government Organisations and Co-Producers

This article adds to the emerging empirical literature on citizen co-production. Based on a telephone survey of 1000 Australian adults, it replicates a five-country European study focusing on three policy domains: neighbourhood safety, environment, and health (Loeffler et al. 2008). It shows that individually performed and closely reciprocal activities with high levels of private value are performed the most often, whereas group activities producing mainly public value are the least performed. We found no evidence of a relationship between service satisfaction and co-production, or between information provision/inclusion/consultation and co-production, which challenges some of the previous literature on what might motivate citizens to co-produce. Citizen self-efficacy has a modest relationship with co-production levels in each of the three policy domains. These findings have implications for policymakers, and pave the way for future empirical research in this field.