When Public Participation in Administration Leads to Trust: An Empirical Assessment of Managers’ Perceptions

TLDR

The study tests whether public participation increases public trust. The authors built a model linking participation to trust via five mediators: consensus building, ethical behaviors, accountability, service competence, and managerial competence. Participation predicts trust, but only ethical behaviors and service competence significantly mediate this relationship, indicating that enhancing administrative integrity and performance is essential for building trust.

Abstract

This study empirically assesses the argument that public participation enhances public trust. A model was constructed to include five intermediate factors that might link participation and trust: consensus building, ethical behaviors, accountability practices, service competence, and managerial competence. As expected, participation does explain a significant amount of public trust. However, using path analysis, only two intermediate factors—ethical behaviors and service competence—were found to significantly contribute to trust. Even successful consensus‐building activities are not likely to enhance trust unless administrative performance improves. These results indicate that if increasing public trust is the primary goal, then the primary focus should be on administrative integrity and performance results.