HOW CAN CITIZENS DEVELOP AND EVALUATE LOCAL TOURIST SERVICES? THE CASE OF THE PROVINCE OF CUNEO (ITALY)

This paper describes government-citizens relations in policy-making in terms of information, consultation and active participation and provides a framework of performance evaluation of tourist services offered by the Province of Cuneo, individuating priorities of interventions. Even if there is a large literature describing the role of citizens on government decisions and on evaluating performances of public services, it always refers only to a national context. This paper bridges this gap applying the previous two topics to the province of Cuneo and to a particular type of service: tourist services. In order to achieve these objectives, the used methodology consists of (1) a systematic analysis of literature concerning both the management of government-citizens relations and the role of citizens, in addition to the evaluation of tourist services; (2) the creation of a framework of government-citizens relations and public services evaluation applied to the Province of Cuneo throughout an exploratory study effected by a questionnaire submitted to 150 citizens; (3) the proposal of strategies for Bodies. The research findings both show how the citizen in the province of Cuneo is not very involved in the provincial governance and expresses a discrete degree of satisfaction towards tourist services. This is an exploratory study based on subjective answers and the framework finds application only to the Province of Cuneo. It could be developed by comparing successful and unsuccessful case studies and be applied to a lower level (i.e. urban level).