E-government service satisfaction and citizen trust in China: Mechanisms and digital-divide boundaries

Digital government has become a defining feature of public administration, and in China it is pursued as a national strategy that couples digitalisation with the closure of the digital divide. This study examines whether e-government service satisfaction is associated with citizen trust in government, how this association is transmitted, and whether it is conditional on citizens' position in the digital divide. Drawing on the 2024 China Social Governance Survey (CSGS2024; N = 3,694 across 31 provinces), the satisfaction–trust association was estimated and decomposed into mechanisms through a bifactor structural equation model that controls for a shared evaluative factor, with digital awareness and age tested as moderators. E-government satisfaction was positively associated with government trust (β = .437, 95% bootstrap CI [.388, .478]). Perceived governance performance carried most of the association (54.5 per cent), with a smaller but statistically reliable contribution through digital governance belief (6.2 per cent). The association was stronger among citizens with lower digital awareness (interaction β = −.036, p < .001) and weaker among older respondents (β = −.024, p = .039). These findings indicate that satisfactory digital-government experience is associated with trust most strongly among less digitally aware citizens, consistent with a bridging, rather than a deepening, role for digital government across the digital divide. The evidence is associational, and the moderation result warrants confirmation in longitudinal or experimental work.