Information Use and Budget Allocation: How Information Plays A Role in Spending Efficiency and Effectiveness among Thailand’s Municipalities
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Abstract
Information is of high value because it can assist in economic, political, and administrative decision makings. Recent public sector reforms concentrating on public finance and budgeting have applied performance information to transform an incremental budget process into a more rational one. It also expects such budget outcomes as spending efficiency and effectiveness. As a result of this reform wave, municipalities in Thailand implemented the performance-based budgeting despite limited financial and administrative resources. This study quantitatively such reform endeavor with the survey research with a questionnaire inquiring the heads of department about their perceptions on budgetary incrementalism, organizational culture, performance information use and budget outcomes. The ordinal logistic regression analyses shows that performance information use is positively associated with enhanced budget outcome—high levels of spending efficiency and effectiveness. Budgetary incrementalism based on the performance-based budgeting is also proved to have the same effect on budget outcome but with lower impact. As policy recommendations to maintain and enhance such desirable budget outcomes, policymakers especially municipal executives should motivate local budget actors to implement the performance-based budgeting and coordinate closely with them to minimize possible conflicts. Meanwhile, as recommendations for future research directions, they should take into consideration levels of budget allocations and other types of local governments adopting the performance-based budgeting in order to strengthen the internal and external validity of how information use matters in the local budgeting realm.
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