Public Service Reforms and Consumers’ Perceptions

This study deals with ‘new public management’ (NPM) reforms of public services and their impacts on the perceptions of European citizens, empirically based on consumers’ subjective attitudes, as it seeks to answer the following question: Has the use of NPM reform concepts such as liberalization, privatization and decentralization on public network services led to benefits for consumers that are socio-economically stable or better off at the expense of socio-economically weaker consumer and therefore caused or increased social imbalances in today’s public service provision? The theoretical findings indicate that the assumption is likely to be correct in cases of regulation failure. The empirical analysis of the reforms’ influence on price satisfaction of socio-economic different consumer groups on basis of an EU 15 average, finds no direct evidence in this matter. Moreover, the empirical results indicate only marginal reform influences on consumers’ satisfaction with price, but advise further research in this area.