Citizen engagement and co-production of e-government services in China

With the increasing complexities of public administration and the challenges of financial cutback, government has been increasingly coproducing public services with citizens and other stakeholders. In this study, we use the case of ‘I find mistakes for government websites’ initiated by the central government in China in 2015 to explore what drives online co-production. Citizens are mobilized to identify and report ‘bugs’ of government websites, which vary substantially across regions and administrative levels. We find that citizens pay more attention to government websites at higher administrative levels, which receive more citizen reports. Further analyses reveal that co-production is driven by different groups of variables at different government levels, which may be attributable to varying functions and user groups. For government websites at city level, co-production is negatively related to e-government performance and economic affluence but positively related to population size and Internet access. For provincial government websites, only population size matters. These findings help to better understand the underpinning mechanisms of online co-production, and generate helpful implications for e-government practitioners.