Daristu, Eunice2024-02-132023-01-252024-02-132022-05https://repo.pacuniversity.ac.ke/handle/123456789/3651.3County Governments have adopted several strategies such as performance contracting, to improve service delivery. However, they have still been found to perform poorly. This is in spite of receiving a considerable share of the national budget to carry out their mandates. This means that the effects of performance contracting strategy in counties need to be examined in detail to understand the exact situation on the ground and its actual value. Based on such arguments, the study investigated the effect of performance contracting on service delivery in the County Government of Kakamega. The study was anchored on three theories, the expectancy theory, goal setting theory, and the dynamics theory of service delivery. Four specific objectives guided the study, thus: determining the impact of target setting on service delivery; establishing the effect of vetting and negotiation on service delivery; finding out the effect of execution on service delivery; and determining the effect of monitoring and evaluation on service delivery. The research made use of a descriptive research design. The study sampled 142 respondents drawn from the Executive and the County Assembly of Kakamega. A self-administered questionnaire was administered to each respondent. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 25.0 software was used to analyse the collected data. Descriptive analysis was performed on the data and presented in frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations. A regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The findings led to the rejection of three null hypotheses: a significant relationship between the independent and dependent variables was obtained. Hence the conclusion was that target setting, execution, monitoring, and evaluation significantly affect service delivery positively. The findings would inform the decisions of policymakers at both levels of government on entrenching performance contracting. The findings will further inform the incoming governor of the County Government of Kakamega on the areas of strengthening to enhance service delivery and also the task force on the performance contracting policy would benefit from the study findings. Further studies should be carried out on service delivery in other County Governmentsen-USPerformance contractingService DeliveryCounty Governments in KenyaThesis