ABSTRACT
I. Introduction............................................................................................................ 354 A. Georgia’s Office of Consumer Affairs ............................................................ 355
II. Theoretical framework........................................................................................... 356 A. Effective online interactions may not be possible ........................................ 357
III. Hypotheses ............................................................................................................. 358 IV. Methodology........................................................................................................... 359 V. Findings .................................................................................................................. 360
A. Explaining contact preferences...................................................................... 362 B. The role of OCA support ............................................................................... 362 C. The role of consumer problems .................................................................... 363 D. The role of demographic differences ............................................................ 364
VI. Conclusion.............................................................................................................. 365 References........................................................................................................................ 367
The e-government age has brought forth all sorts of expectations from citizens, elected officials, and public administrators regarding public service delivery. Many feel that advanced technologies and electronic communication formats can easily displace traditional methods of interaction between government agencies and citizens and subsequently produce greater efficiency of operation. On the other hand, much of the expectation about the possibilities of e-government ignores important externalities related to this service delivery method — in particular, differential access among citizens. In addition, these expectations assume that most citizens would prefer electronic over personal interaction (for the convenience) or at the very least
would not indicate strong preference for the maintenance of traditional means of interacting with government agencies. This research examines citizens’ perspectives about service delivery options of a state agency that specifically compares traditional means of delivery (like in-person office visits) with web-based ones. We present data from a yearlong series of four statewide polls that examined attitudes toward the services provided by Georgia’s Office of Consumer Affairs and the citizen assessment of different service delivery options, including electronic communication methods. Our findings show a strong preference for in-person communication. We then extend the research to identify the factors associated with this preference. Our work is exploratory, but the findings do help to enhance our understanding of the hurdles that public administrators face as they seek to find ways to benefit from new communication technologies.
