Citizen involvement in public sector innovation: Government and citizen perspectives

Abstract

Citizen involvement in public sector innovation is ubiquitously called for. However, public administrations are still hesitant to adopt such practices. We identify key issues in citizen involvement from the government perspective on the basis of related work and a survey among German local authorities (n= 358). First, we find that public administrations perceive a mismatch between citizens' expertise and the complexity of problems. Second, public administrations are uncertain about citizens' motivation for participating in citizensourced innovation. To examine the citizen perspective on these issues, we review literature on citizensourcing and conduct a survey among citizens (n= 128). We find that citizens with relevant expertise are more motivated to collaborate on complex challenges in their area of expertise. While financial rewards generally work as incentives, they are not always necessary due to the variety of motivational factors in citizensourcing. Our study reveals further that the willingness to engage is related to the demography of potential participants. The paper concludes with implications for policy and theory and an outlook on potentially fruitful avenues for future research.