Public values are those providing normative consensus about (1) the rights, benefits, and prerogatives to which citizens should (and should not) be entitled; (2) the obligations of citizens to society, the state and one another; and (3) the principles on which governments and policies should be based.
Bozeman, 2007[1]
Public value is value for the public. Value for the public is a result of evaluations about how basic needs of individuals, groups and the society as a whole are influenced in relationships involving the public. Public value then is also value from the public, i.e., “drawn” from the experience of the public. The public is an indispensable operational fiction of society. Any impact on shared experience about the quality of the relationship between the individual and society can be described as public value creation. Public value creation is situated in relationships between the individual and society, founded in individuals, constituted by subjective evaluations against basic needs, activated by and realized in emotional-motivational states, and produced and reproduced in experience-intense practices.
Meynhardt, 2009[2]
The definition that remains equates managerial success in the public sector with initiating and reshaping public sector enterprises in ways that increase their value to the public in both the short and the long run.
Moore, 1995[3]
Public Value then is the combined view of the public about what they regard as valuable.
Talbot, 2006[4]