Search results

The decline of trust in government has been a critical issue in many parts of the world. Various surveys have indicated that the public cast suspicious eyes on their government and become less trustful of performance of their public sector. The OECD labels trust in government as a fundamental element of the democratic “contract,” while its decline may have significant impacts on government activities. Likewise, the UN also refers to trust as the foundation for good governance; therefore, improving trust would help strengthen sound governance in any polity. As these examples demonstrate, trust in government has increasingly become a central concern for government reformers.

In Japan, for a long time, bureaucrats have been perceived to be trustful social agents and they have enjoyed more confidence than those of party members. However, a series of scandals involving high-ranking bureaucrats, in addition to several policy failures and severe financial difficulties, have deteriorated the trustful image of Japanese public officials. Confronted with the problem, both central and local governments in Japan have attempted to improve their public perceptions and tried to rebuild trust in government by resorting to various types of administrative reform. However, the identification of reasons for the decline of public trust in government appear an awesome task and hard to come. While some of the reforms have helped contributed rebuilding trust, others have further eroded the level of government confidence.

Against these backgrounds, the chapter aims to show the current level of trust in government, specifically in Japan. It tries to assess government efforts of rebuilding trust by discussing different government reforms at both the central and the local levels.

One of the critical challenges confronting the Government of Zimbabwe in disaster management is the dearth of public trust. Public trust is an indispensable governance component as it promotes public participation and support. It is even more important in times of crises where cooperative, collaborative and comprehensive approaches are required. The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, and declared a public health emergency of international concern by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 30 January 2020, is a classic example of a wicked problem that requires public trust in containing it. In Zimbabwe, the government declared the pandemic a national disaster on 17 March 2020; thereafter, it adopted and administered different policy instruments ranging from sermons to sticks to contain the pandemic. Using desktop and secondary data, this chapter argues that the lack of public trust significantly hampered the Government of Zimbabwe's response to the pandemic. Rather than building back the lost public trust, factors such as lack of transparency and accountability, incapacitation, unethical conduct, a heavy-handed approach and lack of meaningful government support further broke the already fragile social contract and public trust. The chapter recommends the need for the strengthening of transparency, accountability, public engagement and effective communication as important strategies for rebuilding public trust.

The author studies the determinants of public trust in government doctors and hospitals (DH) – a crucial indicator of the quality of a country's healthcare system – in India by analyzing the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) 2011–2012.

The author uses descriptive statistics and a set of ordered probit regression models controlling for a set of individual-specific, household-level and other covariates and analyze across heterogeneous contexts (national/rural/urban/male heads/female heads/social groups).

Across contexts, people reporting a great deal of trust in private DH (PDH) are significantly more likely to report a great deal of trust in government DH. Those people with a great deal of trust in government schools to provide good education (vis-à-vis people with only some trust in government school) have significantly higher likelihood of reporting a great deal of trust in government DH. Visiting a private doctor last time (vis-à-vis a government doctor) makes reporting higher trust levels in government DH less likely.

India's healthcare system is afflicted with several resource allocation problems and low public trust issues are indicative of misgovernance. In presence of limited state capacity, ubiquitous corruption and underwhelming institutional trust, understanding the factors influencing public trust in healthcare providers is critical to designing appropriate trust-enhancing public health policies.

Given the sparse empirical literature on public trust in healthcare systems in the developing countries such as India, this study is a pertinent contribution as the study explains the determinants of public trust in DH using a comprehensive unit-recorded household survey dataset.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze public trust during the aftermath of technological and hybrid natural-technological/natech disasters – Hurricane Katrina (2005) and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown in Japan (2011). The work identifies common themes, actions and inactivity that can lead to citizens distrusting the government after disasters.

News reports from the two areas leading newspapers formed the body of the Hurricane Katrina and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown case studies. Of key interest were emerging themes of trust and/or distrust during the immediate impact phase of the disaster in addition to government failures and social breakdowns resulting in a loss of trust in government institutions and individual leaders.

The series of examples illustrate how specific action or in-action by local and federal governments served as a catalyst for a loss of trust in government institutions and individual leaders in government while proposing potential strategies to help public leaders reduce distrust during times of crisis.

The two limitations were the use of only newspapers and the passage of a new law in 2013, the “Specially Designated Secrets Protection Law,” designed to limit news reporting of the press in Japan on the issue of nuclear radiation exposure of the general public in Japan, some of the new data are not available.

The research concludes by offering specific ways to regain trust after a perception of failure during pre- and post-disaster management in the age of mega disasters. The paper lists several recommendations that can be practically implemented to develop a culture of transparent communication, civic engagement in planning processes and inspire trust among stakeholders.

While the paper identifies barriers to establishing trust among government agencies, the citizenry and private industry, it seeks to help inform policy frameworks regarding the importance of the government’s ability to sustain a strong sense of trust that engenders civic participation in preserving or regaining trust in the aftermath of disasters.

This study aims to empirically investigate the relationship of perceived transparency, perceived accountability and perceived responsiveness with overall public trust in local government. Moreover, it addressed the “why” and “how” questions about the existence of this relationship by examining the underlying mechanism of the government response to COVID-19.

Quantitative research design is applied in the current study. Data was collected from two cities situated in Indonesia via a cross-sectional survey at local administration levels. The final data set of 330 respondents was then analyzed using Smart partial least square (PLS)3 by testing through the measurement and structural model.

Results revealed positive associations among the study variables. Also, the mediatory role of the government response to COVID-19 was supported by the results.

This study aims to bring awareness and contribution in the body of knowledge about the importance of elements of good governance in building and sustaining public trust in local governments based on the fact that in countries such as Indonesia, there is a dearth of literature in this context. Further, it provides strategic and practical suggestions to the state regarding the advantages of using good governance practices in their communication with citizens in certain and uncertain situations, especially nowadays during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this study is to investigate cross-cultural perspectives of corporate social responsibility (CSR) based on Carroll’s (1979, 1991) hierarchical CSR model. The present study examines the role of government and business trust in shaping publics’ expectations of business responsibility.

The primary data were derived from a cross-sectional survey in the USA, UAE and South Korea (N = 1,121). This paper compares publics’ prioritizations of business responsibilities across countries and examines how public trust in the government and business is related to CSR perceptions.

The paper presents evidence that publics’ perception of CSR differs significantly across the countries. Moreover, in a trusting society like the UAE, publics tend to put more emphasis on economic and philanthropic duties for business, whereas in a distrusting society like South Korea, publics consider legal and ethical responsibility to be important.

This study adds to the current understanding of diverse publics’ perception of CSR across culture and societies by highlighting the role of public trust in government in defining CSR.

This study aims to investigate the association of perceived accountability, perceived responsiveness and perceived transparency, and public trust in local government. Additionally, mediation of the perceived effectiveness of e-governance was also tested between these relationships.

Using a quantitative cross-sectional field survey, primary data was collected at local administration levels from two cities in Indonesia. The final data set of 355 respondents was then analyzed using SmartPls3 and the measurement and structural models were tested.

Positive results were obtained for all the hypothesized links (direct and indirect relationships). The study’s findings revealed useful insights for policymakers and researchers regarding the public’s perception of good governance and their expectations from the government, which further lead toward trust in local governments.

The study concluded that good governance practices develop and enhance the public’s trust in the government, thus provided key policy directions.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge related to good governance elements and their impact on public trust in the local government via the underlying mechanism of perceived e-governance effectiveness in developing countries in general and particularly the Indonesian context. Moreover, it is a unique study in the good governance domain while considering three good governance elements into a single theoretical framework. Previous studies have explored these elements individually with public trust, so this combined framework advances the body of knowledge. This research’s findings also contributed toward validating good governance theory with e-governance effectiveness and public trust integration in a single comprehensive framework. This research also helped answer the questions arising from past literature about declining public trust trends in local governments.

This study seeks to provide further testing of access in the context of government – community relations within the political context of the Republic of North Macedonia. The study analyses relationship cultivation strategy of access and explains how it contributes to achieving trust and relationship satisfaction in government–community relations. This paper also provides insights into the importance of access to achieving positive government–community relations based on mutual trust and satisfaction.

For this research, a qualitative inquiry was conducted, and qualitative in-depth interviewing was used as the main research method. In total, 39 interviews were conducted: 12 interviews with Macedonian civil servants, eight interviews with Albanian civil servants and 19 interviews with Albanians.

The findings of this study showed citizens not to have enough access to government and its institutions. Besides, the results showed access to be crucial to building positive government–community relations based on mutual trust and satisfaction. In particular, discrimination and social distance were crucial in building trust between government and citizens.

The study provided evidence on the importance and contribution of the cultivation strategy of access to government-community relationships in general and to the relational outcomes of trust and satisfaction in particular. The findings supported the initial assumptions that access constitutes an important factor in predicting the government–community relationship quality.

Citizens are substantial stakeholders in every e-government system, thus their willingness to use and ability to access the system are critical. Unequal access and information and communication technology usage, which is known as digital divide, however has been identified as one of the major obstacles to the implementation of e-government system. As digital divide inhibits citizen’s acceptance to e-government, it should be overcome despite the lack of deep theoretical understanding on this issue. This research aimed to investigate the digital divide and its direct impact on e-government system success of local governments in Indonesia as well as indirect impact through the mediation role of trust. In order to get a comprehensive understanding of digital divide, this study introduced a new type of digital divide, the innovativeness divide.

The research problems were approached by applying two-stage sequential mixed method research approach comprising of both qualitative and quantitative studies. In the first phase, an initial research model was proposed based on a literature review. Semi-structured interview with 12 users of e-government systems was then conducted to explore and enhance this initial research model. Data collected in this phase were analyzed with a two-stage content analysis approach and the initial model was then amended based on the findings. As a result, a comprehensive research model with 16 hypotheses was proposed for examination in the second phase.

In the second phase, quantitative method was applied. A questionnaire was developed based on findings in the first phase. A pilot study was conducted to refine the questionnaire, which was then distributed in a national survey resulting in 237 useable responses. Data collected in this phase were analyzed using Partial Least Square based Structural Equation Modeling.

The results of quantitative analysis confirmed 13 hypotheses. All direct influences of the variables of digital divide on e-government system success were supported. The mediating effects of trust in e-government in the relationship between capability divide and e-government system success as well as in the relationship between innovativeness divide and e-government system success were supported, but was rejected in the relationship between access divide and e-government system success. Furthermore, the results supported the moderating effects of demographic variables of age, residential place, and education.

This research has both theoretical and practical contributions. The study contributes to the developments of literature on digital divide and e-government by providing a more comprehensive framework, and also to the implementation of e-government by local governments and the improvement of e-government Readiness Index of Indonesia.

This study aims to investigate the correlation between public trust and the performance of collaborative e-governance, with a particular emphasis on trust in government institutions as the central aspect of inquiry. It assesses how public trust influences e-governance performance through the lens of good governance principles, encompassing evaluations of trust in government services and trust in the technological infrastructure used for citizen services.

The research framework is based on a thorough literature review, pilot study and practical experience. An empirical survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire to collect primary data from individuals who have used specific e-governance projects. To conduct the survey, the author used the snowball sampling method both offline and online. The author analysed the data using SmartPLS Version 3 to assess the measurement and structural model.

The study rigorously examines and confirms all formulated hypotheses using robust statistical analyses. Nonetheless, the results underscore the pivotal significance of the reliability and utility of e-governance services in nurturing public trust. Furthermore, the research unveils a troubling concern pertaining to the absence of tailored responses to citizen inquiries, grievances and recommendations, indicating an area of vulnerability in the effort to cultivate public trust.

The research has implications for managers, citizens and researchers. It focuses on public trust in interaction-based collaboration, but researchers may extend it to other forms like content-based collaboration. Policymakers can implement the findings in present and future e-governance projects. Limitations include a moderate sample size, country context, and not assessing other factors that may influence public trust in collaborative e-governance performance.

This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge by exploring the link between good governance, public trust and collaborative e-governance performance. It focuses on projects that require physical visits to government offices, where public trust has been impacted. This study is unique because it assesses public trust in collaborative e-governance, specifically in the context of India, where there is limited prior research on this topic exists.