Nonprofit-as-supplement: Examining the Link Between Nonprofit Financial Support and Public Service Quality

This paper explores the link between nonprofit financial support and the service quality of city park systems. Specifically, this research constructs a longitudinal dataset and utilizes the fixed effects model to empirically investigate the relationship between nonprofit financial support for major US city parks and service quality. The findings show that the level of nonprofit financial support to city parks has a positive relationship with two major indicators of city park service quality: the size of parkland and the public access to parks. However, a small statistically significant relationship is found for the number of playgrounds in parks and the level of nonprofit financial support. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of government–nonprofit relationships which heavily emphasize the resource flow from park-supporting charities to governments. It also improves our empirical knowledge of the general associations between public service provision and nonprofit organizations in urban areas.