Professor Richard WALKER introduced the “My Citizens Panel” project and the citizen satisfaction project, conducted at the Laboratory for Public Management and Policy (LaMP), in his talk entitled “My Citizens Panel: New Approaches to Citizen Satisfaction and Public Policy Polling”, delivered as part of the President’s Lecture Series: Excellence in Academia on 19 April.

My Citizens Panel is an online research panel of people who participate in web-based surveys and experimental studies about public policy, public affairs and public services in Hong Kong and beyond. Any citizen who has experience with public services or public policy in Hong Kong can join the panel to contribute their opinions.

Currently, My Citizens Panel is expanding, and LaMP is running multiple projects. My Citizens Panel currently has two main functions: citizen satisfaction surveys and public policy polling. A mobile app, also called My Citizens Panel, has been developed to collect citizen satisfaction data across a range of policy areas based on the location of the services that users experience. Public policy polling uses experimental research designs to inject robust data into policy debates in Hong Kong. Current topics being examined include solid waste recycling, autonomous vehicles and pet welfare.

Professor Walker explained the results of the four rounds of research conducted in 2017, and showed that all of the results strongly supported Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory (EDT). However, the expectations of Hong Kong citizens were much higher than their perceptions of the performance of and their satisfaction with the services. These findings present an important challenge to the Hong Kong government.

Photo source: CityU NewsCentre