A Comparative Study on the Level of Public Service Provided by Different Operators of Public Sports Venues

The introduction of enterprise operation in public sports venues is the current policy orientation and also the need for practice. Compared with public institutions, the economic benefits obtained by enterprises in operating venues have been widely recognized, but whether the level of public services has a comparative advantage still remains controversial. This study adopted a qualitative and quantitative mixed research design. We selected a total of 4, 180 pieces of data from the 1, 044 large-scale sports venues that enjoyed financial subsidies from the central government in the years from 2013 to 2018. The Propensity Score Matching(PSM) was adopted to compare the public service levels between venue operators, which included enterprises and institutions sponsored by government. The field investigation and depth interviews were conducted to reveal the reasons for the differences in the public services levels provided by different operators. The results showed that enterprises had disadvantages in public services,which still had a gap with public institutions. The factors of enterprise operation had negative effects on public service supply, such as strong profit-driven; weak operability of public service standards; imperfect public service contracts; insufficient government services and support; inadequate financial subsidies and inadequate government supervision; and the evaluation system needed to be improved. To improve the public service level provided by enterprises operating venues, the following suggestions are made:Increasing support for enterprise operations and ensuring the relevant support policies are in place; selecting excellent venue operation enterprises and standardizing their operating behaviors; clarifying the basic public service standards of corporate venues and improving the operability of the standards; optimizing the operators' public service evaluation system and encouraging the operators to improve the quality of public service supply; improving the supervision mechanism of corporate operation venues and strengthening supervision of contract performance.