Quality of Service, Expectation, Satisfaction and Trust in Public Institutions: The Abu Dhabi Citizen Satisfaction Survey

Structural equation modelling was utilised to develop and test three models while exploring the causality effect of constructs. The models hypothesised that trust in the government was a result of interactions of several other forces: namely, citizens’ expectation, perception of service quality and satisfaction with these services. The article validates and replicates the findings on the question of causality between performance and trust. The findings were very consistent with the previous ones. The model incorporating citizen's demographic data provided the best fit. According to this model, citizen demographics, expectations and quality of services influence citizen satisfaction; and ultimately, citizen satisfaction influences trust in government. The perceived quality of all services provides significant standardised estimates. However, congestion in streets, parking facilities, parks and recreation and schools are the most salient drivers of citizen satisfaction. The variables of income, education level, years living in Abu Dhabi and marital status exert the highest influence on this satisfaction construct. Perception of quality of services has a significant effect on overall satisfaction; and overall satisfaction drives trust in local government officials. In addition, citizen expectation influences perceptions of the quality of service and overall satisfaction.