Using microblog to enhance public service climate in the rural areas

Public service availability and quality remain relatively low in the rural areas, particularly in developing countries. Microblog has been employed in the rural areas to enhance public services. We propose that by facilitating collaboration among public employees and enabling supervision of their services, microblog can help enhance the public service climate and improve public service performance in the rural areas. A research model is developed to evaluate the importance of microblog affordance and public service capabilities based on the service climate theory. Through surveying the grassroots public employees in 382 villages, we find that the collaboration and supervision affordances of microblog are important in leading to better public service climate. While the collaboration affordance of microblog has both direct and indirect effects, its supervision affordance effect is indirect through enhancing the content delivery and service fulfillment capacities. Furthermore, our additional analysis shows that public service climate can raise the service satisfaction of the rural citizens. The findings show that microblog adoption enhances public service climate in the rural areas where less attention is given. A set of important recommendations are provided to public administrators on how they can more effectively leverage on the emerging microblog technology in the rural context.