Building citizen trust through e-government

The trust of citizens in their governments has gradually eroded. One response by several North American governments has been to introduce e-government, or Web-mediated citizen-to-government interaction. This paper tests the extent to which online initiatives have succeeded in increasing trust and external political efficacy in voters. An Internet-based survey of 182 Canadian voters shows that using the Internet to transact with government has a significantly positive impact on trust and external political efficacy. Interestingly, though the quality of the interaction is important, it is secondary to internal political efficacy in determining trust levels, and not significant in determining levels of external political efficacy (or perceived government responsiveness). For policy-makers, this suggests e-government efforts might be better-aimed at citizens with high pre-extant levels of trust, rather than in developing better Web sites. For researchers, this paper introduces political efficacy as an important determinant of trust as it pertains to e-government.