Surveys assessing sports services and municipal governance

This study aims to investigate the social importance of sport in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. As an instrument for social cohesion and integration, sport has become a very important part of municipal activity. We use two surveys: the Baròmetre, which gathers opinion about municipal services; and satisfaction surveys completed by the users of sports facilities. The sports offer (6.5) receives a better rating than overall municipal management (5.9), and counts for 20.4% of the global assessment of the municipal management. Satisfaction with facilities is 7.3 out of 10, while price receives the lowest mark. Detailed analysis of satisfaction surveys conducted among the population can help the municipal management of sports facilities. Policies that focus only on prices are unlikely to be as effective at improving members’ perception of sports facilities as those that also take other aspects into account.


Introduction
The public management of sport facilities requires, first of all, understanding the determinants of the income and expenses these facilities entail. For this, it is essential to be able to characterise the behaviour of the population in general and of members in particular.
At the request of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat City Council (Catalonia), a study was carried out to analyse the future strategy of its sports policy (Bosch et al., 2018). The economic and social dimension of sport in L'Hospitalet and its future economic viability cannot be analysed without the explicit recognition of its territorial uniqueness. L'Hospitalet has peculiar characteristics due to its geographical location, the environment in which it is located, its size and the density and sociodemographic composition of the population. The assessment of the economic and social dimension of sports practice in the city must be viewed from the perspective of its singularity, without neglecting the reality of neighbouring municipalities (Cunningham et al., 1997).
The legal nature of the ownership of sports facilities and equipment, the management model (direct or indirect), and the dimensions that configure the users' experience with the service received (measuring user perceptions as an indicator of service quality), are some of the elements that help to define the framework of action for municipal sport in L'Hospitalet. The aim of the study was to identify the relationship between the different items that make up municipal facilities' income and expenses, whether they are managed directly or indirectly. As well as understanding the determining factors of income and expenses, and being able to characterise the behaviour of the population in general and of the members in particular, it is important to know the opinions of the city's inhabitants of its sports offer and its management by the city council.
Thus, the objective of this article is to investigate the social importance of the sport in L'Hospitalet based on two surveys: the Baròmetre, which gathers inhabitants' opinions on municipal services, and the satisfaction surveys conducted on members (users) of the sports facilities. Both correspond to 2017. Exhaustive analysis of the results of these surveys provides the city council with relevant information that improves the management of its sports facilities and, therefore, municipal governance in the field of the sport. This article has four sections: the first describes the municipal sports policy of L'Hospitalet; the second presents the results of the Baròmetre; the third examines the results of the user satisfaction surveys; and the final section draws conclusions.

Sport at L'Hospitalet City Council
Sport has an important place on L'Hospitalet City Council's local agenda, and the council recognises that it is a growing phenomenon. Increased citizen participation in sport has social benefits, and playing sport in free time has been a growing trend in recent years, overcoming the traditional competitive dimension. Local sport is a powerful tool for creating positive changes in society, although it has often failed to achieve the social standing it deserves (Ajuntament de L'Hospitalet, 2013).
The quantitative aspects of sport -sports facilities, people who practise sport, sports entities and members, and ultimately, expenses and revenue -are becoming increasingly important in the decision-making and political strategies of public entities. Quantifying the supply and demand for local sports services must be accompanied by qualitative elements that describe and evaluate the results of the provision of services, such as the evolution of management models, their utility and efficiency, and, finally, user perceptions and measures of quality.
City policy increasingly considers the sporting phenomenon. Sport, either practised actively or passively as a spectator at a sport event, is an increasingly unavoidable reality (Bosch et al., 2018). This does not mean that local, autonomic or state election programmes have to engage with sporting events and make them an important part of their action programme, although we believe this situation will change based on the evidence of the growing importance of sport in the future (Prat et al., 2008).
The ownership of sports facilities has a certain uniqueness in Catalonia, with most being public property (55% of the total). The role of the city council is therefore crucial because most of these facilities belong to the cities councils. The rest of the spaces are privately owned, distributed in non-profit sports companies, trading societies dedicated to sport, and resorts.
The economic and social dimension of sport in L'Hospitalet and its future economic viability cannot be analysed without the explicit recognition of territorial singularity. The city of L'Hospitalet has peculiar characteristics due to its geographical location, the environment in which it is located, its size, population density and sociodemographic composition. The valuation of the economic and social dimension of sports practice in L'Hospitalet must be contemplated from the perspective of its singularity, without neglecting the reality of other municipalities in the region and the demarcation of Barcelona (Cunningham et al., 1997). What is more, the local sports phenomenon must be contemplated within the framework of the current regulations and, especially, Catalonia's Law on Sport, 1 and according to the study of the management of sports facilities, Catalonia's Master Plan for Sports Facilities and Equipment (Fábregas et al., 2005).
In addition, the study by L'Hospitalet City Council (2013), which quantified, using a tool designed by the Diputació de Barcelona, the economic weight of sport in the city in order to visualise the importance of local sport in the city.
The estimation of the economic weight of sport in 2011 can be compared with the local budget (this is the only work of this type carried out by L'Hospitalet). The sports budget was 5.8 million euros, 2.19% of the total budget, or 15.28 euros per citizen. The study of economic weight concludes that sport has a weight of almost 18.8 million euros, representing 49.53 euros per citizen. Sports facilities and activities organised represented a total of 12.5 million euros (66.8% of the total), while sports entities absorbed 13.4% of the total. In terms of the sources of funding, 23.9% of the total 18.8 million euros was subsidised by the public administrations, mainly the city council (95.4% of the total) and, to a lesser extent, the Diputació de Barcelona (0.7%) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (3.9%). The subsidy received by the local sports facilities was 13.2% of the total while in the case of sports entities, the public subsidy accounted for 47.2% of the generated weight.
On the other hand, sport has representation in the planning of L'Hospitalet City Council's local activities. For instance, the main objectives related to sport are specified in the section on basic rights guaranteed in the 2016-2019 legislature. Strategic objective 01.06 specifies the following objectives: to put sport at the service of personal and community growth; to guarantee access to sport and physical activity to the citizens of L'Hospitalet in order to improve their life quality; to support sports entities to guarantee their continuity and sustainability; and, last but not least, to develop a Master Plan for Sport in L'Hospitalet that will define the strategy of action to ensure the viability of the sports facilities in the city. The strategic objectives of sports tourism should also be taken into consideration in order to help make the city a global leader in sports tourism.

Baròmetre Municipal
The Baròmetre is a survey that gathers the opinions of the inhabitants of L'Hospitalet about certain services involved in the municipality's social life. One is sport, specifically the sports offer. In particular, we want to know what the main concerns of citizens are and the assessment they make of municipal management at a general level and by area of action. Table 1 shows the average score by neighbourhood for municipal management as a whole (Global) and for the sports offer (Sport). It also shows the percentage in each district of scores below an average mark of 5 (Fail), those which on average exceed 8 (Excellent), and the percentage of participants that answered the question about the sports offer.
As can be seen, the average rating of the sports offer is superior to that of overall municipal management (6.5 versus 5.9, respectively). This is the same across all neighbourhoods. 2 The neighbourhood where sport is most valued, with an average mark of 7.2, is Gornal, which coincides with the neighbourhood with the lowest Fail (5.5%) and the highest Excellent (26.5%) percentages. Curiously, however, at 90.1% it is not the neighbourhood with the highest percentage of answers: 91.9% of respondents answered this question in Bellvitge, where the average sport rating was 7. Other neighbourhoods with an average mark equal to or above the city as a whole are: Centre, Sant Josep, Collblanc, Santa Eulàlia/Granvia Sud and Can Serra.
By contrast, the neighbourhoods where sport is less valued, although it still receives a high pass, are Sanfeliu, Pubilla Cases and Torrassa. The last column of the table could be used to approach sports participation in each neighbourhood, in the sense that those who did not answer the survey in relation to this topic do not practice sports and, therefore, do not know the municipal facilities.  Regarding gender assessment (Table 2), women give a higher score both in global management and in the particular case of sport (0.3 higher than men's score). However, the percentage of women's responses is .8.5 points lower than that of men, which could mean a lower level of sports participation.
By age group, curiously, it is the extremes -those under 25 and over 65 -who value sport most highly, although the answer rate is below 60%. It should be noted, however, that while younger people value sport far above global management (7.1 versus 6, respectively), the elderly value both categories almost equally (6.8 for sport and 6.7 overall management). The other age groups also score sport higher than global management, with the former receiving a mark above 6, while the latter falls below 6 ( Table 3). The groups that most value sport are retirees and students, with both awarding it almost 7 (6.9). On the other hand, self-employed workers are those who value sport the least, with a mark of 6. Over 17% of this group awarded a Fail and just over 2% Excellent. In any case, once again all people, regardless of their employment situation, rated the sports offer more highly than they did the global management of the city (Table 4). The results show that for all assessment criteria (sex, age, employment status, and neighbourhood) sport scores higher than overall management (6.5 out of 10 versus 5.9). However, these marks, which answer direct questions, hide the importance of each service in the global assessment. To quantify this importance, weights have been obtained for the assessment of each service. They were obtained as coefficients in a regression model where the dependent variable is the global score and the explanatory variables are the scores for each of the eight services considered, following the methodology used in Costa et al. (2014), where the sum of the coefficients is restricted to 1 and a constant term is not included.
The most valued service, libraries, with 7.4 points, have no influence on the overall assessment since their weight is 0 (not significant). Likewise, two of the services with the highest scores (municipal markets and garbage collection) also have very little weight in the overall valuation. On the contrary, the municipal police, street cleaning and the sports offer are the services that count for most in the global assessment of municipal management. With weights above 20%, between the three they account for almost 64% of the global score (Table   5).

L'Hospitalet City Council's Servei d'Esports (Sports Service) carries out an annual satisfaction
survey among the members of the municipal sport facilities to gather their opinion on certain relevant aspects, such as cleaning and membership price, among others. This section analyses the data corresponding to 2017, looking first at the whole city, and then the data per sports centre disaggregated by sex and age group. It should be mentioned that Table 6 does not include the information corresponding to two facilities (the municipal sports centres Les Planes and Santa Eulàlia) due to the low number of responses. But they have been included in the calculations in Tables 7 and 8, meaning the totals differ by 0.1. For the facilities analysed (Table 6), the score given by members was 7.3, with the highest those of the municipal sports facilities Bellvitge (7.9), Centre (7.8) and Gornal (7.6). On the other hand, the lowest marks were given to the municipal sports facility Fum d'Estampa (6.2) and to the municipal sports complex L'Hospitalet Nord (6.3). By subject, the most valued are monitoring (8.1) and attention (7.9), with Bellvitge standing out in monitoring, with the only Excellent (9.2) in the whole table. It should be noted that none of the centres received a Fail and that the only marks below 6 were price at L'Hospitalet Nord (5.4) sports complex, the Sanfeliu sport facility (5.5) and the Municipal Pools (5.8). Table 7 shows the sports facility scores by sex, where it can be seen that this variable does not affect the global assessment. Attention, activities and price do not depend on the sex of the member, while women score cleaning a little lower and monitoring a little higher. By age (Table 8), the youngest (under 18 years) value the facilities highest, with an overall score of 8.1, although they only represent 4.2% of the total number of respondents. The most critical are those aged 30 to 44 with lower scores than the total in all the categories. As in the previous case, and using the same methodology, weights in the overall assessment have been estimated for each of the different aspects of the survey (Table 9). One of the most valued aspects, monitoring, has a very low weight in the overall assessment. On the other hand, the aspect with most weight in the global score is activities, followed by attention, cleaning and, at some distance behind, membership price. In the analysis by facility, it is worth highlighting the importance of the price of the sports facilities Fum d'Estampa and L'Hospitalet Nord, with 30% of the total, the low weight of activities at the Sanfeliu sports facility, where the most highly rated subject was the attention, as it was at the Municipal Pools, and the importance of cleaning at the Bellvitge and Fum d'Estampa sports facilities (Table 10). The following tables present the information for the different sports facilities in the city by sex and by age group. Table 11 corresponds to the L'Hospitalet Nord sports complex and shows that, as in the general case, women give higher grades than men to all the aspects considered, and rate the monitoring and attention highest and price the lowest. Regarding age groups, young people (up to 29 years old) gave the best marks in all categories, while the cohort that was most critical of this facility was 30 to 44 year olds, who even gave a Fail for price (4.8). At the Municipal Pools, the marks for all the aspects considered are around 7, except for price, which is below 6. Women, young people aged between 18 and 29, and adults between 30 and 44 years old give the lowest rating to the price of this facility (Table 12). 6.8 7.3 7.4 7.6 6.5 7.1 27.9 60 and over 7.1 7.0 6.6 6.9 6.0 6.9 10.7 Total 6.8 7.0 6.8 7.0 5.8 6.8 100.0 Source: compiled by authors using data from the satisfaction survey. Regarding the Fum d'Estampa municipal sports facility (Table 13), women, who account for more than 70% of the responses, give worse marks than men in all categories, except for monitoring, and the difference of 0.5 stands out in the global assessment of the installation. By age group, the low marks given by the group of under 18s cannot be considered relevant, since they represent only 1.5% of the total answers. The group from 30 to 44 years old gives the lowest marks in all the characteristics considered, with ratings below the sports average. Price, at only 5.1, particularly stands out. The Gornal sports facility is characterised by receiving marks exceeding 7.5 in all aspects, except price (6.3). The overall assessment is almost 8, thanks mainly to the mark given by women, young people between 18 and 29 years old, and those aged 60 or older (Table 14).  Table 15 corresponds to the Sanfeliu sport facility, which receives average marks of between 5.5 (price) and 7.1 (attention and monitoring). By gender, men assess the facility a little better than women (0.2 more), who give a very low grade to cleaning (0.8 less than men). By age group, those under the age of 18 most value the sports facility, much more than the other age groups, with the most critical being those between 45 and 59 years old. As mentioned earlier, the Bellvitge sports facility is the most highly rated, with a global average score of 7.9 (Table 16). Especially noteworthy is the monitoring, which receives marks of over 9 in all age groups and for both men and women. Attention and activity scores are generally above 8 and the worst rated categories are price and cleaning, this being the only installation where price is not the worst rated aspect.
The Centre sports facility, the second most highly rated, scores above 8 in attention, monitoring and activities, 7.5 in the case of cleaning and 6.1 for price. Women rate the facility a little more highly than men and the age group that gives lower than average scores across all aspects is 30 to 44 years old (Table 17).

Conclusions
Sport has become a very important part of municipal activity, as evidenced by the fact that one of the strategic objectives of the Municipal Action Program of the City of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat is to "Put sport at the service of personal and community growth". In recent years, sport has become an instrument of social cohesion and integration, a significant fact in a city such as L'Hospitalet where the percentage of the population born abroad is relatively significant.
Citizens of L'Hospitalet value the municipal management of the sports offer (facilities), giving it a very good mark (6.5 out of 10), higher than the overall City Hall management average (5.9).
In addition, the sports offer is one of the services that scores best in the overall assessment of municipal management, along with the municipal police and street cleaning. Although the rating can be considered to be good, there is still some room for improvement, especially in neighbourhoods such as Sanfeliu, Pubilla Cases and Torrassa, where the score is relatively lower.
On the other hand, the overall assessment of sports facilities by members is good (7.3 out of 10), with price receiving the worst mark (6.2), while monitoring and attention are the most highly valued, and none of the aspects receives a Fail. Thus, campaigns and actions that tend to lower membership prices or raise awareness among members that what they receive is adequate for the price they pay (they receive more than they perceive), could help improve this rating. For facilities, the centres that obtain the highest marks are Bellvitge, Centre and Gornal, while there is more room for improvement at Fum d'Estampa and the Hospitalet Nord CE.
Detailed analysis of satisfaction surveys of the population can help municipal management of sport facilities. In the example of L'Hospitalet, despite being the lowest rated aspect, membership price is not as decisive in the global score as the activities offered, attention or cleaning. Policies that focus only on prices are therefore unlikely to be as effective at improving members' perception of sports facilities as those that also take other aspects into account.