Trust in E-government as a Tool to Shape Political Trust Between Urban and Rural Residents: An Empirical Study Based on Trust Theories

The adoption of e-government is regarded as a potential way to improve people’s trust in government. However, due to the digital divide rooted in urban-rural divide, the impacts of e-government use on urban and rural residents’ political trust might be different. This is one of the earliest research that concentrates on this problem. The objective of this research is to understand whether trust in e-government services has significant impacts on urban and rural residents’ political trust. A conceptual framework was constructed to investigate the relationship between citizens’ trust in e-government services and their overall political trust based on trust theories and previous literature of e-government, including institutional-based trust, process-based trust, characteristic-based trust and other factors. The conceptual framework was tested via a survey of 539 urban residents and 409 rural residents in Chongqing. The findings indicate that trust in e-government services has overall significant and positive impacts on both urban residents’ and rural residents’ political trust. In addition, structure assurance and familiarity only have impacts on urban users, while expectation confirmation toward e-government and reciprocity of liking greatly affect both two groups. Moreover, perceived characteristics similarity has significant negative effects on rural residents, but not urban citizens.