Effectively handling public appeals is a key component of online government services, and improving the one-to-one interaction process between the government and citizens is particularly crucial for enhancing the citizen appeal experience. As a carrier of communication information, the disposal media adopted by the government is an essential factor that may affect the effectiveness of the government-citizen interaction. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the effect of disposal media richness on public satisfaction. Drawing on media richness theory, this paper examines the influence of disposal media richness on public satisfaction and its boundary conditions by analyzing the 12345 municipal hotline order data of a city in China. We use the propensity score matching method and ordered logit regression model to identify the effect. The results indicate that the richness of disposal media positively influences public satisfaction. Moreover, this effect is moderated by characteristics of the disposing personnel and the citizen. When the management level of the disposing personnel is higher, and when the channel of appeal is social media platforms (compared to official platforms), this effect is weakened. In contrast, when the emotional valence of the citizen is more positive, this effect is stronger. This study identifies the influencing factors of public satisfaction during interactions between the government and citizens and expands the application scenarios of media richness theory. The paper also provides valuable guidance for government-citizen interaction related policies and their selection of disposal media to enhance public service efficiency.