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When Public Participation in Administration Leads to Trust: An Empirical Assessment of Managers’ Perceptions
Author(s) -
Wang XiaoHu,
Van Wart Montgomery
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
public administration review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.721
H-Index - 139
eISSN - 1540-6210
pISSN - 0033-3352
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-6210.2007.00712.x
Subject(s) - competence (human resources) , accountability , public trust , public relations , path analysis (statistics) , business , perception , public service , empirical research , public service motivation , public administration , political science , psychology , social psychology , public sector , philosophy , statistics , mathematics , epistemology , neuroscience , law
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.