Municipal services’ perceived quality in Chile: political trust vs. spending

On a sample of 2635 responses from 132 Chilean municipalities, we evaluate the determinants of citizens’ satisfaction with municipal services. We confirm the citizen satisfaction conceptual framework of Van Ryzin (Ryzin, Public Performance and Management Review 30:521–535, 2007;Ryzin, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 32:597–614, 2013; Ryzin, Public Performance and Management Review 30:521–535, 2007) and the Expectancy-Disconfirmation Model. Trust in municipal government and municipal expenditure influence public services perceived outcome. Higher monthly income also means higher perceived outcome, which could explain the switch in Chile towards a far leftist government in 2021 general elections. We find two biases. First, public sector employees perceive higher quality municipal services (self-assessment bias). Second, there is some empirical evidence of a political partisanship bias: citizens regard municipal services as higher quality when their political ideology aligns with the Mayor. We find no clear impact of corruption on perceived services quality, and more research is needed on this regard. This feature is thought to be connected with the low corruption of Chile (Chile ranked similar to the USA). Finally, higher trust in the community, as predicted by the Social Capital Theory, means greater quality municipal services.