Table IV Cost efficiency in the selected...

Table IV

Cost efficiency in the selected articles

Authors	Year of publication	Research focus/topic/question	Findings with respect to costs, efficiency, saving, value
Rich	1981	Relationship between the operations of political institutions and voluntary efforts in municipal services delivery. It is possible to understand how new ways of involving citizens in municipal service delivery systems can increase effectiveness and efficiency of public services delivery	Co-productive activities on public services level are represented by individual and collective voluntary efforts in relation to public services delivery. Voluntary action affects public services and depends on the effectiveness of the incentive system. Volunteered labor can markedly affect the costs of municipal services increasing the quality of services
Percy	1983	Review of the definitions of coproduction, examination of empirical evidence about the extent of these efforts, and considerations about the prospects of coproduction in improving the delivery of urban services	Productive actions by citizens may reduce some agency expenditures; these actions should not be considered as costless or inexpensive resources by public administrators. Co-productive actions represent real costs to citizens in the form of time, money, and opportunity costs
Brudney	1984	Implications of local coproduction of services for improving municipal productivity	Coproduction programs may affect municipal productivity by alternating the cost of service inputs and/or the amount or quality of outputs; Substitution of citizen inputs for those of paid service agents in the service delivery process, cost of citizens’ involvement (time and resources of PA for informing, recruiting and training/certifying citizens); if citizen labor is utilized effectively, the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs
Ferris	1984	Development of a framework for examining the efficiency and equity effects of the voluntary behavior of citizens through time and money donations in the delivery of public service	The key issue is not how to involve citizens in the production of collective goods and services, but rather how citizens will voluntarily help to provide such services either through time and/or money donations. Thus, the emphasis should be on coprovision which has the potential to improve efficiency and equity in public service delivery
Percy	1984	Tracing the development of coproduction (definitions, costs/benefits, incentives/disincentives)	Citizens’ coproduction is positively associated with higher level of urban services and with lower budgetary costs for provisions of current service levels
Clary	1985	Three aspects of the change brought about by coproduction in the relationship between a bureaucracy and its community environment are discussed: how collective coproduction can improve the response of the bureaucracy to a turbulent environment; what internal, organizational problems may result from this change in the composition of the labor force; and what incentives are necessary to motivate citizens to coproduce	For coproduction to be an effective delivery mechanism, it must be assessed in terms of costs as well as benefits. Officials, especially elected ones, tend to see only the economic gains from the use of citizens in place of paid staff. This view is a narrow one and ignores the difficult organizational questions of collective coproduction
Anderson and Clary	1987	Demonstrating whether the benefits of a coproduction system outweigh the costs involved in designing, implementing and administrating it	Community benefits exceed the costs incurred; minimal public resources have been used to finance a system which has brought the area within the state standard of ten minutes for response to medical emergencies
Brudney	1987	Growing privatization of services and its relationship to and implications for a co-productive approach	True privatization and private sector initiatives attempt to reduce the cost of government by transferring service responsibilities to private institutions; citizens augment the resources and productive capacity available to the service bureaucracy
Bovaird and Loeffler	2012a , b	Exploring the ways in which coproduction can be conceptualized as a shift from “public services for the public” towards “public services by the public”	While user and community coproduction can achieve major improvements in outcomes and service quality and can produce major cost savings, it is not resource free. Initiating such approaches can involve substantial setup costs and supporting them effectively will usually involve a flow of public sector resources. Coproduction may be “value for money,” but it usually cannot produce value without money
Evans et al.	2012	Highlight some examples of good practice in sustainable development in social care: main drivers for and barriers to the development of sustainable systems of social care with decreasing budgets	To have any chance of making services sustainable in the long term, social care must adopt innovative and new ways of thinking about commissioning and delivering services, based on the meaningful inclusion of local communities and incorporating approaches such as prevention, localism and self-managed care
Clark et al.	2013	Investigating possible disparities by race, education, and income in making service requests because communications advances affect citizens’ ability to participate in the coproduction of government services	Citizens can and do play a complementary role in identifying and reporting needs for services in combination with the local government by reducing the monetary and human capital costs required to determine where government services are needed
De Witte and Geys	2013	How citizen coproduction influences the measurement of public service providers’ productive efficiency	Taking account of the “co-productive” activities of citizens is crucial for appropriately defining inputs and outputs in the analysis of productive efficiency (and for the accuracy of the results from such analyses). Indeed, as final outcomes are influenced by citizens’ active participation in the public service production process, they are inappropriate to evaluate the pure productive efficiency of public service provision, and their use will lead to biased inferences
Jakobsen and Andersen	2013	Does coproduction potentially increase the gap in service outcomes between advantaged and disadvantaged citizens? Or could coproduction programs be designed in ways that support the most disadvantaged users in increasing their productive efforts and service outcomes?	Coproduction (helping parents to be part of their kids’ education by distributing some learner-kits) decreases disparities and avoids having to set up special classes for disadvantaged children from less educated background. Less children sent to special classes, i.e. less output from this public service needed to achieve the outcome of education
Mees et al.	2017	Opportunities, limitations and barriers to coproduction in flood risk governance in terms of resilience, efficiency and legitimacy	Replacing governmental actions by citizen coproduction decreases public spending and thus strengthens a policy’s efficiency. In order to be resilient, however, coproduction should be complementary to public investment, which can make it less efficient, e.g. investments that benefit the largest amount of people and assets while communities in less populated areas are expected to co- or self-fund the prevention of and response to flooding
Wilderspin	2017	Shifting the balance of care from institutional care (hospitals) to community settings and self-management/help to improve quality and reduce costs with decreasing NHS budgets	Reducing costs requires greater level of integration between primary care, community health and social care and the voluntary sector
Adams and Boateng	2018	Assessing the impact of coproduction on household water access and service delivery in the informal settlements of Lilongwe, Malawi	Coproduction through community–public partnerships in Malawi has been largely successful at improving water service delivery. Not having to supervise and pay for employee (vendor) salaries has reduced the cost of water
Bourne et al.	2018	Evaluating outcomes for Sussex Recovery College students who use mental health services	Attending co-produced Recovery College courses is associated with reduced mental health service use which equates to non-cashable cost-savings for each attending student
Burgess and Durrant	2019	Locating coproduction within the narrative of austerity and the ethos of time credits in the academic debate about the reciprocal economy; understanding the disconnect between the rhetoric and reality of coproduction	Whilst adding more volunteers to time credit can extend the capacity, the work of volunteers and time credit themselves cannot replace professional skills or make up for their lack when service funding is reduced or withdrawn
Cordella and Paletti	2018	Critically comparing different ICT mediated model of production of public services highlighting the risk and benefits associated with each mode of production	The adoption of coproduction arrangement based on crowdsourcing and opensourcing can enlarge the range of services offered to citizens keeping inputs constant
Kay and Edgley	2018	Evaluating cost efficiencies and health outcomes in a recovery college	Coproduction activities in a recovery college have a significant impact on health outcomes with possible financial efficiencies in secondary care mental health pathways because students require less practitioner hours
Musso et al.	2018	Verifying whether managing and motivating volunteers in the interdependent production of public goods that are to a high degree non-rival and non-excludable is more likely in fiscally strained cities with institutional and political features that ease management, such as ideological alignment and city scale associated with managerial capacity	Reliance on volunteers varies: for policing there appears to be little relationship between fiscal factors and presence or reliance on volunteers, although counter to expectations cities with higher per capita sales tax revenues are more likely to have volunteer policing programmes. There is more evidence that volunteerism in fire services is associated with fiscal stress. It is possible that it appears less risky, both in real and political terms, to substitute volunteers for employees in firefighting than in policing
Palumbo et al.	2018	Exploring coproduction primary school meal service and in particular how different stakeholders are engaged in co-designing and co-delivering, whether coproduction leads to better service quality and increased outcomes and how coproduction is supported to encourage value co-creation	The enhancement of group coproduction paved the way for significant cost savings because of the cut of logistic expenditures and the reduction of waste with a reduction in the total number of meals provided to students
Walsh et al.	2018	Assessing why community led approaches successfully implemented in Alaska failed in Scotland	Coproduction allowed to cut hospital A&E visits by 42%, hospital in-patient days by 36%, speciality care by 58%, and routine doctor visits by 30%, all of which have reduced costs because resources are better used

Authors	Year of publication	Research focus/topic/question	Findings with respect to costs, efficiency, saving, value
Rich	1981	Relationship between the operations of political institutions and voluntary efforts in municipal services delivery. It is possible to understand how new ways of involving citizens in municipal service delivery systems can increase effectiveness and efficiency of public services delivery	Co-productive activities on public services level are represented by individual and collective voluntary efforts in relation to public services delivery. Voluntary action affects public services and depends on the effectiveness of the incentive system. Volunteered labor can markedly affect the costs of municipal services increasing the quality of services
Percy	1983	Review of the definitions of coproduction, examination of empirical evidence about the extent of these efforts, and considerations about the prospects of coproduction in improving the delivery of urban services	Productive actions by citizens may reduce some agency expenditures; these actions should not be considered as costless or inexpensive resources by public administrators. Co-productive actions represent real costs to citizens in the form of time, money, and opportunity costs
Brudney	1984	Implications of local coproduction of services for improving municipal productivity	Coproduction programs may affect municipal productivity by alternating the cost of service inputs and/or the amount or quality of outputs; Substitution of citizen inputs for those of paid service agents in the service delivery process, cost of citizens’ involvement (time and resources of PA for informing, recruiting and training/certifying citizens); if citizen labor is utilized effectively, the benefits are likely to outweigh the costs
Ferris	1984	Development of a framework for examining the efficiency and equity effects of the voluntary behavior of citizens through time and money donations in the delivery of public service	The key issue is not how to involve citizens in the production of collective goods and services, but rather how citizens will voluntarily help to provide such services either through time and/or money donations. Thus, the emphasis should be on coprovision which has the potential to improve efficiency and equity in public service delivery
Percy	1984	Tracing the development of coproduction (definitions, costs/benefits, incentives/disincentives)	Citizens’ coproduction is positively associated with higher level of urban services and with lower budgetary costs for provisions of current service levels
Clary	1985	Three aspects of the change brought about by coproduction in the relationship between a bureaucracy and its community environment are discussed: how collective coproduction can improve the response of the bureaucracy to a turbulent environment; what internal, organizational problems may result from this change in the composition of the labor force; and what incentives are necessary to motivate citizens to coproduce	For coproduction to be an effective delivery mechanism, it must be assessed in terms of costs as well as benefits. Officials, especially elected ones, tend to see only the economic gains from the use of citizens in place of paid staff. This view is a narrow one and ignores the difficult organizational questions of collective coproduction
Anderson and Clary	1987	Demonstrating whether the benefits of a coproduction system outweigh the costs involved in designing, implementing and administrating it	Community benefits exceed the costs incurred; minimal public resources have been used to finance a system which has brought the area within the state standard of ten minutes for response to medical emergencies
Brudney	1987	Growing privatization of services and its relationship to and implications for a co-productive approach	True privatization and private sector initiatives attempt to reduce the cost of government by transferring service responsibilities to private institutions; citizens augment the resources and productive capacity available to the service bureaucracy
Bovaird and Loeffler	2012a, b	Exploring the ways in which coproduction can be conceptualized as a shift from “public services for the public” towards “public services by the public”	While user and community coproduction can achieve major improvements in outcomes and service quality and can produce major cost savings, it is not resource free. Initiating such approaches can involve substantial setup costs and supporting them effectively will usually involve a flow of public sector resources. Coproduction may be “value for money,” but it usually cannot produce value without money
Evans et al.	2012	Highlight some examples of good practice in sustainable development in social care: main drivers for and barriers to the development of sustainable systems of social care with decreasing budgets	To have any chance of making services sustainable in the long term, social care must adopt innovative and new ways of thinking about commissioning and delivering services, based on the meaningful inclusion of local communities and incorporating approaches such as prevention, localism and self-managed care
Clark et al.	2013	Investigating possible disparities by race, education, and income in making service requests because communications advances affect citizens’ ability to participate in the coproduction of government services	Citizens can and do play a complementary role in identifying and reporting needs for services in combination with the local government by reducing the monetary and human capital costs required to determine where government services are needed
De Witte and Geys	2013	How citizen coproduction influences the measurement of public service providers’ productive efficiency	Taking account of the “co-productive” activities of citizens is crucial for appropriately defining inputs and outputs in the analysis of productive efficiency (and for the accuracy of the results from such analyses). Indeed, as final outcomes are influenced by citizens’ active participation in the public service production process, they are inappropriate to evaluate the pure productive efficiency of public service provision, and their use will lead to biased inferences
Jakobsen and Andersen	2013	Does coproduction potentially increase the gap in service outcomes between advantaged and disadvantaged citizens? Or could coproduction programs be designed in ways that support the most disadvantaged users in increasing their productive efforts and service outcomes?	Coproduction (helping parents to be part of their kids’ education by distributing some learner-kits) decreases disparities and avoids having to set up special classes for disadvantaged children from less educated background. Less children sent to special classes, i.e. less output from this public service needed to achieve the outcome of education
Mees et al.	2017	Opportunities, limitations and barriers to coproduction in flood risk governance in terms of resilience, efficiency and legitimacy	Replacing governmental actions by citizen coproduction decreases public spending and thus strengthens a policy’s efficiency. In order to be resilient, however, coproduction should be complementary to public investment, which can make it less efficient, e.g. investments that benefit the largest amount of people and assets while communities in less populated areas are expected to co- or self-fund the prevention of and response to flooding
Wilderspin	2017	Shifting the balance of care from institutional care (hospitals) to community settings and self-management/help to improve quality and reduce costs with decreasing NHS budgets	Reducing costs requires greater level of integration between primary care, community health and social care and the voluntary sector
Adams and Boateng	2018	Assessing the impact of coproduction on household water access and service delivery in the informal settlements of Lilongwe, Malawi	Coproduction through community–public partnerships in Malawi has been largely successful at improving water service delivery. Not having to supervise and pay for employee (vendor) salaries has reduced the cost of water
Bourne et al.	2018	Evaluating outcomes for Sussex Recovery College students who use mental health services	Attending co-produced Recovery College courses is associated with reduced mental health service use which equates to non-cashable cost-savings for each attending student
Burgess and Durrant	2019	Locating coproduction within the narrative of austerity and the ethos of time credits in the academic debate about the reciprocal economy; understanding the disconnect between the rhetoric and reality of coproduction	Whilst adding more volunteers to time credit can extend the capacity, the work of volunteers and time credit themselves cannot replace professional skills or make up for their lack when service funding is reduced or withdrawn
Cordella and Paletti	2018	Critically comparing different ICT mediated model of production of public services highlighting the risk and benefits associated with each mode of production	The adoption of coproduction arrangement based on crowdsourcing and opensourcing can enlarge the range of services offered to citizens keeping inputs constant
Kay and Edgley	2018	Evaluating cost efficiencies and health outcomes in a recovery college	Coproduction activities in a recovery college have a significant impact on health outcomes with possible financial efficiencies in secondary care mental health pathways because students require less practitioner hours
Musso et al.	2018	Verifying whether managing and motivating volunteers in the interdependent production of public goods that are to a high degree non-rival and non-excludable is more likely in fiscally strained cities with institutional and political features that ease management, such as ideological alignment and city scale associated with managerial capacity	Reliance on volunteers varies: for policing there appears to be little relationship between fiscal factors and presence or reliance on volunteers, although counter to expectations cities with higher per capita sales tax revenues are more likely to have volunteer policing programmes. There is more evidence that volunteerism in fire services is associated with fiscal stress. It is possible that it appears less risky, both in real and political terms, to substitute volunteers for employees in firefighting than in policing
Palumbo et al.	2018	Exploring coproduction primary school meal service and in particular how different stakeholders are engaged in co-designing and co-delivering, whether coproduction leads to better service quality and increased outcomes and how coproduction is supported to encourage value co-creation	The enhancement of group coproduction paved the way for significant cost savings because of the cut of logistic expenditures and the reduction of waste with a reduction in the total number of meals provided to students
Walsh et al.	2018	Assessing why community led approaches successfully implemented in Alaska failed in Scotland	Coproduction allowed to cut hospital A&E visits by 42%, hospital in-patient days by 36%, speciality care by 58%, and routine doctor visits by 30%, all of which have reduced costs because resources are better used

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