The Role of Trust in the Global Acceptance of E-Government
Throughout the world, the number of e-government applications enabled by information and communication technologies (ICT) is proliferating. Some of the newer applications allow for interaction between government officials and its citizenry. As a result, the concept of a public sphere and e-democracy is becoming more of a reality. In all of these applications, one would expect that the level of trust within the society would be an important factor in determining the level of adoption. Using cross-country data from 140 countries, this empirical study extends past research by examining the impact of trust on the level of e-government where national diversity is used as a proxy of trust within a nation. The major empirical finding of this research shows that, even after controlling for the level of economic development and other socio-economic factors, trust as measured by ethnic and religious diversity, was a significant factor affecting e-government usage.