Abstract
Since the 1980s there has been a growing emphasis on consumerizing welfare services as a form of provider accountability and as part of the commercialization of public agencies, which has formed part of the New Public Management reforms. Associated with this, the structured measurement of tenant satisfaction is well established in England's social housing sector and has become increasingly important in informing official assessments of social landlord effectiveness. This paper investigates whether published tenant satisfaction scores are sufficiently reliable and robust to serve as a pre-eminent and unambiguous service quality measure, examines the validity of comparing recorded satisfaction rates for social landlords operating in different social and demographic contexts, and looks into how raw survey results could be adjusted to take account of context factors outside a landlord's direct control.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 70-79 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | International Journal of Consumer Studies |
Volume | 36 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2012 |
Keywords
- Consumerization
- customer satisfaction
- service quality
- social housing
- tenant satisfaction measurement