Analysis of Citizen Satisfaction in Municipal Services

Local authorities play a vital role in community development and are one of the sources closest to the population. Today’s citizens have become more attentive and demanding and do not accept undifferentiated treatment from local elected officials. In fact, as users of the public services provided by local authorities, citizens are continuous evaluators of both their services and the public policies adopted by the elected representatives. As voters and, therefore, decision-makers, citizens certainly cast their votes for whomever they expect to meet their needs. This study seeks to evaluate the satisfaction and define a Satisfaction Index (SI) of the citizens towards their municipality of residence, namely the municipality of Alfândega da Fé, Portugal. With a quantitative approach, this case study applied a questionnaire survey to a sample of residents in the selected municipality. In total, 350 questionnaires were collected, corresponding to approximately to 0.076% of the population, assuming a sampling error of 5.03%. The results obtained regarding the SI show that the citizens of Alfândega da Fé are globally satisfied with their municipality of residence, scoring 73.29 points out of 100 for overall satisfaction. The results also show that the dimensions ‘Quality of life in terms of leisure, access to culture, environmental quality and safety’, ‘Image of the municipality’ and ‘Quality of basic infrastructures and services’ have the most significant weight in the overall satisfaction of the citizens with their municipality of residence.