Problems and participation: an explanation of citizen-initiated contacts using a problem-oriented approach.

Research on the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and the mobilization of political and administrative officials through ?citizen-initiated contacts? (or ?particularized contacts?), has produced conflicting results. Some have found a positive relationship between these two variables, others have found a negative, parabolic or a negligible relationship. A number of conceptual and methodological problems may have contributed to these conflicting results. In this study, we examine the effects of SES and other individual level characteristics on citizen-initiated contacting in a way that avoids many of these problems. It does so by focusing on the mobilization of officials by individual citizens in response to various neighborhood problems using a ?problem-oriented approach? to the study of participation. The analysis is restricted to individuals who perceive a particular neighborhood situation as problematic: which problems do and which problems don?t result in citizen initiated contacts? Characteristics of the perceived problem, of the individual perceiving the problem and of the neighborhood in which the individual lives are taken as predictors. The data are collected in a large face-to-face survey among citizens in a medium sized city in the Netherlands. In this survey 557 citizens from different neighborhoods were interviewed mentioning 1516 problems ranging from heavy traffic to noisy neighbors. The data are analyzed using multi-level analysis since perceived problems are nested within individuals. According to the data, it is the type of problem (individual instead of collective) and the social involvement of those perceiving the problem, that determine whether a problem leads to an action or not. The other characteristics of individuals do not contribute significantly to the explanation of action. While at first sight it seems that biases in problem conversion do not exist if one uses this problem-oriented approach, we subsequently show that many individual level variables do have a significant impact on the number of problems residents experience, which gives us a more precise understanding of the problem-participation nexus than the conventional action-oriented approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]