# How self-governance willingness and participation efficacy shape residents’ satisfaction with urban public services: Evidence from neighborhood renewal in Hangzhou, China

## TL;DR

This study explores how residents' willingness to self-govern and their sense of efficacy in participating influence their satisfaction with urban public services in renewed neighborhoods in Hangzhou, China.

## Contribution

The study introduces a novel framework linking resident agency to satisfaction through participatory governance mechanisms in legally structured urban renewal contexts.

## Key findings

- Self-governance willingness and participation efficacy are positively associated with satisfaction with urban public services.
- Participation efficacy reduces perceived disparities between renewed and newly built neighborhoods, enhancing satisfaction through fairness perceptions.
- Self-governance willingness increases disparity sensitivity, highlighting the need for institutional responsiveness to avoid negative outcomes.

## Abstract

Using an original survey of 2,202 households across 36 renewed neighborhoods in Hangzhou, China, this study examines how resident agency—operationalized as self-governance willingness and participation efficacy—shapes satisfaction with urban public services within a legally structured participatory governance context. To address endogeneity, we estimate two-stage least squares models with district and street fixed effects, instrumenting self-governance willingness with distance to the provincial government offices and participation efficacy with policy awareness and community involvement; instrument diagnostics indicate strong and valid instruments. In the second stage, both constructs are positively associated with satisfaction. Mediation analyses show that participation efficacy is associated with lower perceived disparities between renewed and newly built neighborhoods, and perceived disparities, in turn, are negatively related to satisfaction, consistent with partial mediation in which effective participatory channels translate engagement into experienced fairness. By contrast, self-governance willingness is positively related to disparity sensitivity, yielding a suppression pattern absent adequate institutional responsiveness. Results are robust to additive-index specifications and the original five-point outcome, and with significantly larger effects among low-income, urban-hukou, small-unit groups. The findings underscore the value of institutionalized, responsive participatory arrangements that align with resident preferences, clarify responsibility allocation, and sustain feedback loops to enhance procedural fairness and, in turn, satisfaction within legally structured neighborhood renewal.