Attributes of Rural Long Tail Public Service

This chapter explains how the inherent attributes of rural long tail public services lead to a mismatch and imbalance between supply and demand. The imbalance of rural long tail public service has its own characteristics in spatial distribution, time sequence distribution, category level, satisfaction cost and so on. From the supply side of rural long tail public service, the long tail attribute belongs to the field of power-law distribution in mathematics. Compared with the standard normal distribution, the slope of the demand distribution of different types of rural public services is shown to be larger (the decline rate is faster), and drags a long “thick tail”, which approximately obeys the unilateral power-law. The slope of head is large and limited in terms of types; the slope of “tail” is small but with many types. The standard normal distribution rules hold that the samples are independent of each other, while the power-law distribution rules hold that the samples are related to each other. An interactive relationship does indeed exist between different types of rural long tail public services. Therefore, the long tail can be extended and developed. The supply side attribute of rural long tail public service can be analyzed from the aspects of service type, financial expenditure and NGOs. From the perspective of different service types, the rural long tail public service is “embedded” in the local cultural, social and economic environment. These services reflect the mutual integration and fuzzy boundary with the head public service. From the perspective of fiscal expenditure, rural long tail public service has the characteristics of concealment and unlimited extension. This book further explains the attributes of rural long tail public service from the NGO perspective.