Citizen perception of public service quality was examined to determine its relationship to demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the community, variations in service expenditures, and quantitative service performance measures. The Bureau of the Census, state agencies, and a mail survey of residents in all 100 North Carolina counties provided data on 5 public services: education, law enforcement, parks, health, and libraries. The qualitative output measure for each service was based upon citizen evaluation of service quality as poor, fair, good, or excellent on a 4-point Likert scale. The quantitative performance measures were dropout rate, crime index, per capita acres in public parks, infant mortality rate, and number of books per capita. The findings indicate that per capita expenditures for the public services studied are not powerful predictors of either quantitative performance or perceived service quality. Quantitative service performance measures have only a modest relationship with service quality measures. Overall, the socio-demographic characteristics of the community seem to be more important than either level of expenditures or quantitative measures of service performance in predicting citizen perception of service quality. (JH)