Co-creating Value in Citizen–Government Engagement

The theoretical foundations of citizen engagement are largely unexplored despite the existence of frameworks for social media-based citizen–government interactions. Although the service-dominant (S-D) logic-informed theorization of the related customer engagement (CE) concept has been widely actuated, knowledge of citizens’ engagement with the government is scant, causing a significant research gap. Therefore, based on the S-D logic-informed CE, we conceptualize citizens–government engagement (CGE) as a citizen’s cognitive, emotional, behavioural, and social activity during/related to citizen–government interactions. Then, we propose an S-D logic-informed CGE framework in the social media context. In this Facebook Australia commissioned research, we empirically test the framework using a case study of 68 Australian federal government-owned Facebook pages in a sample from January 2013 to January 2016. Our results demonstrated that CGE is multidimensional and fluctuating, like CE. We also demonstrate the role of CGE in value co-creation, as perceived by citizens, and identify four CGE-based activation outcome practices: broadcasting, connecting, communicating, and activating. Finally, important implications for research and practice are presented, along with a discussion of the study’s limitations and avenues for future research.