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Abstract
Coproduction has gained popularity in recent decades in reaction to scholars’ and practitioners’ optimism about providing public services based on a more collaborative relationship between the public sector and society. Previous literature on coproduction has emphasized normative perspectives on the topic, but relatively little empirical evidence has been presented on its substantive aspects, particularly its obstacles and outcomes. This dissertation study focuses on one possible challenge that coproduction of public services might face: increased goal ambiguity in multiple-actor settings, which could harm coproduction outcomes. Expanding the concept of goal ambiguity into the coproduction domain, this study investigates how goal ambiguity affects coproduction outputs in the case of Georgia regional water councils. Two empirical analyses were conducted using the official proceedings of Georgia regional water councils and data from the Georgia Environmental Monitoring and Assessment System. The findings of these analyses are as follows. The first analysis, employing a mixed method approach, reveals that goal ambiguity has a negative impact on the elicitation of local knowledge input, which is an essential outcome in co-designing regional water programs. The second analysis, employing ordinary least squares regression and multilevel analysis, indicates that higher levels of goal ambiguity are negatively related to efforts to reduce gaps between water supply and demand, which is the main output of co-delivering regional water programs. This result confirms that goal ambiguity is present in coproduction processes, and that it negatively affects coproduction outputs. Hence, this study contributes toward a better understanding of goal ambiguity not only in organizational contexts but also in coproduction settings.