Citizen Contacts with Local Governments: A Comparative View

The relationship between area social well-being and the extent of citizen-initiated contacts with local governments is examined for Dallas and Houston. The findings of this study, negative linear relationships between social well-being and contacting, are compared and contrasted with those of Jones and associates (1977) who, studying Detroit, found a parabolic relationship between social well-being and contacting behavior. The needs/awareness model developed by the Detroit researchers is expanded and elaborated using the findings of the present study. The Dallas-Houston results indicate that the empirical distribution of contacts necessary to fit the needs/ awareness model for Detroit is not universally applicable. Several explanations for this difference are examined-principally that the effect of the awareness function may be reduced and that the range of variation of the social well-being indicator may be restricted in some environments. It is further suggested that simple changes in the institutional structure for receiving contacts may alter the pattern of requests and make the distribution of contacts more reflective of citizen need than of citizen awareness.