The study and practice of customer satisfaction in the private sector have progressed over several decades, with a focus on service quality. In public administration, research on the relationship between service quality and other variables is ongoing. Johnson and Gustafsson [1] at the University of Michigan proposed a model diagram concerning customer satisfaction with convenience stores (in Chapter 4), showing that multiple factors comprising multiple questions that affect customer satisfaction lead to an enhanced reputation and customer loyalty; they summarize (in Chapter 5) the method computing each question category of factors into synthetic variables using principal component analysis, and demonstrate how the most influential factors by multiple regression analysis using these compound variables are examined.
SERVQUAL is a five-category scale for evaluating service quality concerning customer satisfaction. However, in actual organizational settings, five categories of questions may be burdensome to respondents and reduce the response collection rate. The author’s research involves conducting on-site surveys on customer satisfaction or service quality of a local government office using an original three-category questionnaire scale referring to the similar simplified framework of three categories of question items applied in Malaysia by Mansor and Che Mohd Razali [2] and tailoring the question items to a scale for local Japanese administrative settings. Talib and Shukor [3] also conducted a factor analysis for each question in SERVQUAL and found that it was appropriate to divide the questionnaire into three categories. The development of a simple method with equivalent measurement capabilities has methodological significance for customer satisfaction research and has clear advantages in terms of practical application. Using Principal Component Analysis regression for quantitative research on the determinants of customer satisfaction was introduced by Johnson and Gustafsson [1]; their classic study is widely referenced worldwide.
The study of customer or citizen satisfaction in public administration in Japan was derived and developed from the research and practice of policy evaluation and government performance evaluation, with increasing awareness of issues of local government reform. Mie Prefecture, in central Japan, implemented a government evaluation system during the 1990s, and local governments across the country followed suit. This movement influenced the central government to enact a law in 2001, mandating all ministries to carry out three types of policy evaluations: performance assessment, program evaluation for constructing infrastructure, and general evaluation with several perspectives. Several survey-based studies have indicated that large municipalities, such as cities, are more assertive than towns and villages in incorporating policy evaluations into local governments’ operational activities [4,5]. Evaluation activities that can be applied to individual situations are now required, which can be developed through the improvement of more specific operations and introduction of more specific methods of evaluation practice (for the current status of government evaluations in Japan, see Moteki 2020). These circumstances necessitate that Japanese municipalities apply evaluation activities to specific conditions through improving more specific operations and introducing new methods. More diversified methods are required for specific organizational needs, such as program satisfaction surveys targeting citizens and the use of logic models. One such survey, shisaku manzoku-do chosa, also known as the citizen satisfaction survey, focuses on the level of importance of and satisfaction with all programs and analyses them in four quadrants. Many municipalities, including the city of Higashihiroshima, use citizen satisfaction survey programs and focus on the level of importance of and satisfaction with each program. As the survey targets municipal residents, their perceptions and behaviors related to a wide range of local government programs can be collected by mail. Based on the answers, each program is placed in one of the four quadrants decided by the two elements of importance and performance.
According to the results of a Japanese-language search for kokyaku manzokudo [customer satisfaction] in the CiNii Database, an official article database, the earliest reference to customer satisfaction in Japan was in the title of the 1984 paper, “Customer Satisfaction Survey at Sekisui Heim,” published in the Journal of the Japanese Society for Quality Control. Sekisui Heim is the housing brand of the Sekisui Chemical Group, a house builder focusing on detached houses. The article was published four years after Oliver [6] published his discussion of satisfaction based on expectancy disconfirmation theory. Since then, the term “customer satisfaction” has been used in Japan and practice and research have developed mainly in the private sector. Quality control (QC) is a production-control method developed in Japan by the Nikkagiren [Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers], a foundation operated in cooperation with the Japanese business community, academia, and government. It aims to improve and streamline production management, mainly in private companies, using scientific methods including statistics, for industrial development. QC is characterized by discussions and proposals for production improvement in small groups in the workplace. It became known as QC Circle in these small groups, and attracted attention from large foreign companies when the Japanese economy was booming; some of those companies also adopted the practice. QC was used to mean both Quality Control and Quality Circle. The practice of QC at Toyota Motor Corporation, Kaizen, has become world-renowned both for its practice in the corporate management field and the research undertaken since. The method was often referred to as Total Quality Control; however, since then, it became part of the name of an academic journal overseas (The TQM Journal), and is now called Total Quality Management (TQM) around the world—in Japan, Nikkagiren began calling it TQM in 1996 [7]. The term customer satisfaction is used in case studies of TQM in Japan, such as the case study of the kaizen movement at Shiseido, a Japanese cosmetics company.
Research on policy evaluations and administrative evaluations in Japan has focused mainly on the introduction of overseas evaluation theories and the examination of advanced examples of domestic practice, such as the evaluation system for administrative projects. However, research from the perspective of specific methods to improve actual evaluation practices based on overseas evaluation theories, that is, evaluation research based on logic model methods and service quality assessment using SERVQUAL, has not progressed much. This study clarifies the factors that determine the level of satisfaction with counter services and examines, scientifically and academically, each question category’s constituent items to understand the aspects that lead to user satisfaction improvement with government office counter services.
This study is unique because it provides suggestions for practical use through on-site research at Higashihiroshima City Hall. Therefore, it applied the method adopted by business research investigating private corporations. Noda [8–10] focuses on the concept of citizen satisfaction when dealing with residents of local governments in Japan by conducting survey studies. A search of the database Google Scholar, using the keyword “customer satisfaction,” reveals many research papers from private companies and government agencies in Malaysia, one of them being Mansor and Che Mohd Razali [2], which uses a three-category Customer Satisfaction survey scale, similar to the present study. The rise of public–private research focusing on customer satisfaction in Malaysia is probably due to the Look East policy of President Mahathir, who ruled from 1981 to 2003. The policy sought to emulate the post-war economic recovery of Japan, located east of Malaysia, in its socio-economic institutions and methods of corporate management that led to the country’s economic recovery.
Rather than use the terms “customer satisfaction” or “citizen satisfaction,” this study focuses on “user satisfaction.” However, the author’s previous research on public administration in 2021 and 2022, used “customer satisfaction,” and not “citizen satisfaction,” in the paper titles. The reasons for this are: (1) in the field of local government, the subject of the author’s research, the customers of local governments include registered Japanese citizens and foreigners, and, (2) the term “citizen satisfaction” is used at an abstract level in relation to multiple policies of local governments in general. Additionally, those levels of analysis differ from that of satisfaction surveys conducted at specific, concrete administrative facilities, as the author’s studies mentioned. Using the concept of customer satisfaction is also disadvantageous as the private corporate image of the concept may impede the understanding of the research collaborators and may be misunderstood by other researchers as a sign of normative awareness that private-sector management methods should be applied to public organizations.
Here the term “user satisfaction” indicates that the survey focuses on the satisfaction level with the counter service provided by public facilities. In empirical studies on public administration, Alemán et al. [11], Lauritzen et al. [12], and others apply “user satisfaction” to services provided by administrative agencies and facilities. Implementing the user satisfaction concept demonstrates the position of trying to eliminate the preconceived notion of private-sector management superiority evoked by the customer satisfaction concept and to grasp satisfaction in the field concretely and objectively. Nevertheless, there are no major differences in the specific research design from the author’s previous studies that used the expression “customer satisfaction,” and the study can be viewed as a series of studies.
In health care administration, patient satisfaction research has evolved and is moving toward the study of patient experience (PX). This study examines the factors contributing to satisfaction by focusing on the series of experiences of each surveyed user when they enter a public facility, complete errands, and leave the building. Some surveys under the premise of citizen satisfaction are based on expectancy disconfirmation theory but concern long-term memories or surveyed citizens’ evaluations of policies and services that they have not experienced. One such example is the policy satisfaction surveys conducted by local governments in Japan, many of which use the postal mail method and are opinion surveys on consumer expectations (importance) and evaluations (perceived outcomes) of a wide range of service measures provided by the local government. This study is premised on expectancy disconfirmation theory as an explanation of the mechanism that causes satisfaction; however, the purpose is to focus on user satisfaction, and users’ experiences at public facilities, and empirically examine factors that improve it.
Studies using SERVQUAL use the concept of service quality in their title. Based on a survey of firms in three service areas, Lee et al.’s [13] analysis showed that perceived service quality is a predecessor variable of satisfaction and not it’s opposite. Likewise, the author believes that service quality is one factor that determines satisfaction. Although the subjective perception of service quality overlaps significantly with satisfaction, the author focuses on the term satisfaction and uses service quality as a subordinate concept, considering past research and practice in which customer satisfaction was emphasized in mass consumer goods such as cosmetics.
The SERVQUAL scale is characterized by the calculation of the value of the difference between expectations and the actual situation for each item, based on the expectancy disconfirmation theory. In a study in Italy et al. (2008) showed that using the values of performance as perceived by respondents is superior to using difference values in terms of reliability and validity; it also saves time in the calculation. The fact that the difference between expectations and perceived performance largely dictates satisfaction is supported by several studies in the field of public administration [14], but with an eye toward application to practice, it is important to examine the factors governing satisfaction that are relatively important and within the service provider’s control. This study aims to determine whether user satisfaction can be adequately explained by principal component regression analysis by placing respondents’ perceived accomplishments at the center of the questionnaire, although it acknowledges that expectancy disconfirmation theory is premised as an explanatory theory of the satisfaction mechanism. Furthermore, to reduce the researcher’s burden of analysis and the respondents’ burden of filling the form, and to survey only perceived performance without using difference values, this study proposes a unique three-category scale, simpler than the five categories in SERVQUAL, and tests its usefulness through principal component regression analysis.
The study involves a multi-category questionnaire survey of residents, and statistically examines factors affecting the overall customer satisfaction level with counter services using selective multi-category principal component regression analysis [15], which combines principal component analysis and multiple regression analysis. Everitt [16] mentions that in applying principal component analysis, multiple question items can be grouped into several categories before the combined principal component scores of explanatory variables are used in the multiple regression analysis. Thus, the use of the principal component score can weaken the multicollinearity problem between each question item used in the regression analysis. In addition, this study compares the results of the survey conducted by the author at Higashihiroshima City Hall with those implemented at the Kurose branch office in 2020 and the Internet survey of other cities. Hardware refers to extrinsic attributes that influence perceived service quality, such as buildings, tables, chairs, and lighting. It was relatively unimportant concerning the cost explanatory variables in the regression analysis of the Kurose branch survey results but has been examined in more detail in this survey.
The current municipal territory of Higashihiroshima city was formed by the municipal merger of the old Higashihiroshima city and the five towns of Kurose, Fukutomi, Toyosaka, Kochi, and Akitsu in February 2005. With a population of 189,196 as of July 31, 2021 [17], it ranks fourth in Hiroshima Prefecture. The new city established branch offices in the five towns consolidated in 2005. These branch offices perform most of the counter-service functions executed by the old towns before the municipal merger, except for affairs related to city-wide policy decision-making such as urban planning. Citizens can carry out many administrative procedures at nearby branch offices even after the merger.
Accordingly, a survey was conducted in the Kurose branch office in August 2020, and another was performed at Higashihiroshima City Hall in August 2021 as part of the present study. The survey results at the Kurose branch showed that human factors were most important for overall satisfaction, similar to the study by Mansor and Che Mohd Razali [2]. The author’s (2021) study presents the results of an Internet survey of ward offices in Osaka city. The regression analysis found that the composite variable of the service delivery quality factor was the most important, unlike the results for the Kurose branch office. After confirming the accuracy of administrative facilities and that the factors governing customer satisfaction differed depending on urban/suburban areas, this study aimed to empirically examine the factors governing customer satisfaction in the main office building of the city hall of a regional city with a population of less than 200,000 to obtain pointers for making practical improvements to administrative services. It also aimed to verify the usefulness of the scale by utilizing the three categories of satisfaction survey scales proposed by the author and examining the coefficient of determination of the regression analysis under different circumstances for the City Hall of a local city in Japan.
This study identifies the primary factors that influence the satisfaction level with counter services. It uses a similar method to that of Johnson and Gustafsson’s [1] study. The development of a simple method with equivalent measurement capabilities has methodological significance for customer satisfaction research and advantages in terms of practical application. To explore the determinants of user satisfaction and compare it with the survey already conducted in 2020 at the Kurose branch office, Higashihiroshima, the current study was performed at Higashihiroshima City Hall, located at Saijo Sakae-Machi, in the Saijo area.