Non-Face-to-Face Public Services and Perceptions of Public Organizations

Abstract

Public services are the primary channels and government activities in which citizens contact public organizations. In turn, public services provided by the government are critical for citizens to recognize public organizations and governments according to their content and procedure. With the onset of COVID-19, the existing face-to-face public service delivery system has shown limitations in meeting citizens’ needs for public services (fastness, transparency, and safety); as a result, a shift to non-face-to-face public services is required. The study proposes the question: “How does citizens’ satisfaction with non-face-to-face public services affect public organizations (response and transparency) and government satisfaction?”. The purpose of this study is to verify the effect of satisfaction (content and procedural) with non-face-to-face public services on the perception (responsiveness and transparency) of public organizations and governments’ satisfaction. Specifically, non-face-to-face public services are divided into content and procedural aspects to analyze the responsiveness and transparency of public organizations and their impact on government satisfaction. This study used a structural equations model for analysis and used data collected in 2019 by the Korea Institute of Public Administration, a representative public research institute in Korea. The main analysis results are as follows: the responsiveness and transparency of public organizations increased alongside satisfaction with content and procedural satisfaction with non-face-to-face public services, and government satisfaction increased with responsiveness to and transparency toward public organizations.