How are citizens' public service choices supported in quasi-markets?

Many countries have introduced quasi-market reforms that enable citizens’ choice in education, healthcare, and other public services. The research question in this paper is the following: How canWeb-based decision support help citizens to make calculated public service choices in quasi-markets? In Section 3, the paper focuses on how decision support design helps citizens make such choices as they isolate, examine, and rank alternatives. A case study, set in Sweden, explores 14 cases of decision support in education, healthcare, elder care, and the public pension system. Decision support is most evident in the area of education, but decision support is found in the other areas as well. In most cases, the support consists of information on the right of choice and instructions on how to search among alternatives. Many areas permit direct comparisons, but some areas only permit more indirect comparisons. All 14 cases explain how to make a choice, but only a few cases offer a ranking device. The decision support for choice is inconsistent with the theoretical model of calculated choice in all aspects despite the trend toward greater consistency with the model. Our results call for a critical discussion of technology design that aids citizens as consumers or customers in their relationship with public services. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).