Misplaced Trust ? Exploring the Structure of the E-Government-Citizen Trust Relationship

A growing body of research focuses on the relationship between e-government, the relatively new mode of citizen-to-government contact founded in information and communications technologies, and citizen trust in government. For many, including both academics and policy makers, e-government is seen as a potentially transformational medium, a mode of contact that could dramatically improve citizen perceptions of government service delivery and possibly reverse the long-running decline in citizen trust in government. To date, however, the literature has left significant gaps in our understanding of the e-government-citizen trust relationship. This study intends to fill some of these gaps. Using a cross-sectional sample of 787 end users of US federal government services, data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index study, and structural equation modeling statistical techniques, this study explores the structure of the e-government-citizen trust relationship. Included in the model are factors influencing the decision to adopt e-government, as well as prior expectations, overall satisfaction, and outcomes including both confidence in the particular agency experienced and trust in the federal government overall. The findings suggest that although e-government The authors would like to thank Professor Claes Fornell of the University ofMichigan for granting access to the ACSI data that made this study possible. Thanks also to Jason Joyner of CFI Group for his extensive and helpful comments on an early version of the article. Forrest V. Morgeson III is a Research Scientist at the ACSI in Ann Arbor, MI. He has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh. His recent research focuses on the financial impact of consumer satisfaction and citizen satisfaction with federal government services—both online and offline—and has recently been published or is forthcoming in journals such as Public Administration Review, Electronic Government: an International Journal, Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, and the International Journal of Research in Marking. David VanAmburg is Director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Mr VanAmburg has acted as Director for the ACSI’s Federal government-wide satisfaction measurement since its inception in 1999 and of the ACSI as a whole since 2001. He has lectured extensively both in the United States and abroad on topics related to customer satisfaction, quality, customer loyalty, and shareholder value, and co-authored The American Customer Satisfaction Index at Ten Years, ACSI 1994–2004: A Summary of Findings: Implications for the Economy, Stock Returns andManagement. Sunil Mithas is an Assistant Professor at Robert H. Smith School of Business at University of Maryland. He has a PhD in Business from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and an Engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India. Prior to pursuing the PhD, he worked for about 10 years with the Tata group. His research focuses on strategic management and the impact of information technology resources and has appeared in journals that includeManagement Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly,Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing, and Production and Operations Management. His articles have won best article awards and best article nominations and have been featured in practice-oriented publications such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Bloomberg, Computerworld, and InformationWeek. Address correspondence to the author at morgeson@theacsi.org. doi:10.1093/jopart/muq006 a The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Inc. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory Advance Access published April 26, 2010 by on A ril 7, 2010 http://jpaordjournals.org D ow nladed fom may help improve citizens’ confidence in the future performance of the agency experienced, it does not yet lead to greater satisfaction with an agency interaction nor does it correlate with greater generalized trust in the federal government overall. Explanations for these findings, including an assessment of the potential of e-government to help rebuild trust in government in the future, are offered.