Assessing the level of citizens' satisfaction with the performance of the municipal organization with a question-based citizen approach (Case study: District 4 of Ardabil Municipality)

 

Extended Abstract
Introduction
Municipality is one of the necessities of the social system, which is necessarily represented by a structure that is possible only through the intervention of the people. Also, the performance of the municipality, as one of the institutions and perhaps the most important institution in the structure of urban management, has an essential role in citizens' quality of life. In order to measure the performance of the municipality, two major methods, objective and subjective, can be used. In the objective method, the municipality's performance is compared with a series of criteria and standards to determine how close its performance is to the standards, but in the subjective method. It investigates to what extent people are satisfied with the quality of urban services and performance as recipients of services and beneficiaries of plans and programs. Performance evaluation and management is one of the special topics of strategic human resource management and is considered a suitable tool for improving the performance of employees and organizations. Comprehensive and sustainable management of the city will be implemented when the citizens are satisfied with the performance of the municipal organization because citizens' satisfaction with the performance of organizations plays an essential role in improving urban management and increasing the efficiency of urban management. Ardebil city is a metropolis with rural and nomadic roots. It faces challenges in urban life, and we see citizens arguing about the lack of satisfaction with the performance of the municipal organization in providing social, technical, and civil services at the city level. Therefore, according to the statement of the problem, the most important question raised by this research:
-How satisfied are the citizens with the performance of the Municipality of Ardabil Region 4?
According to the question, the most important hypothesis is that it seems that the citizens of Ardabil are not satisfied with the performance of the municipality's duties in various civil-technical, service, and socio-cultural departments of the municipality.
 
Methodology
The research method is descriptive-analytical, and field sampling (survey) has been used to collect the required information. Based on this method, questionnaires were prepared and completed in the target community (citizens living in Region 4 of Ardabil Municipality). In order to measure the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach's alpha method was used so that the calculated Cronbach's alpha was equal to 0.82. In this way, it can be said that the distributed questionnaire has high reliability. In addition, the methods of studying documents, books, and sources related to the research topic have been used. The statistical population of the research consists of all the residents of Region 4 of Ardabil municipality, equal to 237,292 people (according to the population and housing census of 2015).
The sample size was estimated to be 384 people based on Cochran's formula, and to increase the confidence factor, the sample size was considered to be 400 people. The sampling used in this research is cluster sampling combined with simple random. The way of distributing the questionnaire was that a certain number of alleys were randomly selected in each neighborhood, and then the questionnaires were completed by the alley's residents. In order to analyze the collected data, descriptive-analytical and inferential statistical methods were used. Based on this method, the data collected in frequency distribution and statistical parameters were analyzed and then analyzed using statistical methods of Kendall correlation, Kruskal Wallis, and t-test in SPSS software.
 
Results and discussion
Based on the data collected from the total sample of 420 people, 65% of the respondents are men, and 35% are women. In terms of education level, 42.7% have a university education, 35% have a diploma education, and 22.3% have a school or sub-diploma education. According to these general and detailed indicators, the importance of each of the services provided by the municipality was questioned. Therefore, the Kruskal Wallis test was used to test the hypothesis (the citizens of Ardabil city are not satisfied with the performance of municipal duties in various civil-technical, service, and socio-cultural departments of the municipality) and the importance of each of the municipal duties. According to the obtained results related to the service activities of the municipalities, the activity of timely garbage collection and handling and cleaning of the green space is the most important from the citizens' point of view. According to the municipality's duties in civil and technical activities, the construction and reconstruction of parks are the most important, such as asphalting roads and streets, making predictions, and protecting the region from accidents and natural disasters. They are in the following ranks. Based on the duties and activities that municipalities perform in cultural and social fields, from the citizens' point of view, holding various recreational programs (such as the Nishat system) is the most important, which shows that citizens are changing the structure of municipality only as an organization providing urban services. The results indicate that the level of satisfaction of the citizens with the quality of services and the way of informing the municipality is lower than the limit, but the level of satisfaction with the treatment of officials and employees is average.
 
Conclusion
The general results indicate a significant difference between the civil-technical, service, and socio-cultural duties of municipalities from the point of view of the citizens of the study area in terms of their importance, so the service duties of the municipality are the most important. This is because citizens are involved with these services daily, and the deficiency of each of them, such as garbage collection, makes their lives difficult. Socio-cultural duties are placed in the next rank, which shows that the citizens do not expect the city management and municipality only to deal with the civil, physical, and service situation but also to provide the basis for social life, citizen relations, and organizing affairs; they require the creation of public spaces and spending leisure time, etc. According to the results, which shows the greatest dissatisfaction of the citizens in the service sector, it is suggested that the responsibility of urban affairs, including the mayors of different areas of Ardabil and the city council, monitor more in this field, both in terms of quantity and quality of services such as Hama. Regarding the socio-cultural duties of the citizens, who did not expect much from the municipality, but since one of the municipality's duties is to meet these needs, it is suggested that the municipality take pragmatic steps in providing leisure facilities, including the development of recreational centers, holding art festivals, etc. In general, to overcome this problem, it is suggested that the municipality take appropriate and coordinated executive measures or city councils, including equipping the mechanized facilities of urban services in the technical, emergency, and general sectors in order to satisfy the citizens in all dimensions for all groups of citizens provide housing for every age, gender, and texture.
 
Funding
There is no funding support.
 
Authors’ Contribution
Authors contributed equally to the conceptualization and writing of the article. All of the authors approved thecontent of the manuscript and agreed on all aspects of the work declaration of competing interest none.
 
Conflict of Interest
Authors declared no conflict of interest.
 
Acknowledgments
 We are grateful to all the scientific consultants of this paper.