What matters where: multi‐scalar citizen satisfaction in Brussels via cross‐group multicriteria satisfaction analysis

Abstract

Understanding how citizen satisfaction varies within a fragmented metropolis requires more than a single pooled index. This paper develops a transferable cross‐group MUlticriteria Satisfaction Analysis (MUSA) framework that fits comparable preference‐disaggregation models for municipalities and socio‐geographically grouped municipalities, enabling like‐for‐like comparison of importance and satisfaction on common scales. Its novelty lies in making such comparisons methodologically consistent and substantively interpretable across territorial units, with a policy contribution that is primarily diagnostic and comparative rather than prescriptive. Using an original trilingual survey in the Brussels‐Capital Region, we fit pooled, municipality‐level, and municipality‐group models across four dimensions: mobility and infrastructure, health and education, culture and community, and public safety and order. The pooled model indicates moderate overall satisfaction. Health and education emerges as the most influential and best‐performing dimension, whereas public safety and order combines high importance with the weakest satisfaction. Municipality‐level models reveal substantial spatial dispersion, but because single‐municipality samples are uneven, municipality‐group models provide the main comparative lens. At that level, the results show distinct priority structures: some groups exhibit one dominant high‐importance, low‐performance lever, whereas others require broader multi‐criteria improvement. The framework, therefore, helps identify priority domains within territorial units and benchmark municipalities and municipality groups on a common analytical basis, while making sample imbalance and model uncertainty explicit.