This paper posits the idea that conversations about public services encourage society participation in public issues and establish closer ties between society and government service providers. It is argued that by making society aware of how a service is provided – its process citizens (clients) may develop a better attitude for interacting with government and other service users, by discussing...

Whilst the idea of utilizing social media to advance government-led e-Participation initiatives has proliferated significantly in recent years, mostly such initiatives do not meet the intended expectations, as the majority of them fail to attract wider citizens’ audience. Overall, the key factors that could explain and predict citizens’ participation are not yet thoroughly identified. Therefore...

Sustainable development is highly dependent on the implementation of environmental education programs, which has as its ultimate goal to produce environmentally literate citizens that undertake environmentally friendly actions. Efforts on environmental education along past years are now perceived on the increase of citizens awareness on European countries and, particularly, in Portugal. However...

Background Japanese citizens are interested in choosing their own end-of-life care, but few have created their own advance directive. This study examined changes among Japanese citizens' attitudes toward end-of-life care and advance directives and explored factors that affected these attitudes. Methods We conducted five focus groups with 48 participants in 2009 and 2010. All participants were...

The objective of this paper is to examine national cultural factors that may influence citizen adoption of eGovernment websites in two culturally different countries: Germany and Slovakia. In this purpose we developed a behavioural model basing on the three columns: Trust, culture and habitual patterns. We used the Hofstede’s national culture dimensions in combination with latest research in IS...

While e-Government has the potential to improve public administration effectiveness as well as efficiency by increasing convenience, performance and accessibility of different government services to citizens, the success of these initiatives is dependent not only on government support, but also on citizens’ willingness to accept and adopt those e-government services. Although there is a great b...

Expertise has been a topic of fascination among cognitive psychologists for many years now. Numerous studies have explored expertise in 1981), and many other areas. In recent years, social psychologists have shown an increasing interest in expertise as well (e.. being learned by cognitive psychologists about the correlates and consequences of expertise in nonsocial domains are proving to be ver...

The aim of this study was to determine the public's, i.e. citizens' attitude on one hand, and health-care professionals' attitude on the other, regarding the public education in palliative care. Also, the assessment of health-care professionals' attitude regarding the need to establish a sub-specialty in palliative medicine in Croatia was performed. The study was carried out during 2007 and 200...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To study the association between greenery filled public areas that are nearby a residence and easy to walk in and the longevity of senior citizens in a densely populated, developed megacity. DESIGN Cohort study. METHODS The authors analysed the five year survival of 3144 people born in 1903, 1908, 1913, or 1918 who consented to a follow up survey from the records of registe...

Previous studies show that citizens usually prefer physicians as decision makers for rationing in health care, while politicians are downgraded. The findings are far from clear-cut due to methodological differences, and as the results are context sensitive they cannot easily be transferred between countries. Drawing on methodological experiences from previous research, this paper aims to identi...