Toward an Institutional Theory of Citizen Coproduction

Abstract

This article posits an institutional theory of citizen coproduction beginning with a relatively new economic theory of consumption that presents consumers as producers of the items they consume. The theory distinguishes between goods produced by the private market or public agencies and commodities that consumers produce from those goods. When a public agency and citizens produce the same commodity, it is called "coproduction." This article argues that institutional arrangements play an important role in encouraging or discouraging citizens from coproducing commodities, and introduces the concept of an "institutional rule configuration" as a mechanism to investigate that role. The formal analysis shows three separate rule configurations involving changes affecting citizens' ability to obtain commodity outcomes. By manipulating rule sets, called "boundary rules" and "authority rules," different situations are created and implications drawn from each for citizen coproduction. The article suggests how boundary and authority rules might be used separately as alternative policy instruments to encourage citizen coproduction. It also recommends how the rule sets might be used together to compensate for disincentive effects one rule set might create alone.