Public Participation and Trust in Government: Results From a Vignette Experiment

Securing the trust of citizens can facilitate the delivery of high-quality public services and government has a duty to act in a trustworthy manner. However, even if public service quality is high and policy sound, if decisions are made without accountability, trust in government may suffer. Public participation can contribute to the legitimacy of the exercise of government power. Using a two-by-two vignette-based experiment embedded in a survey conducted in South Korea, I test the impact on trust in government of public participation in the policymaking process under conditions of both good and poor policy performance. The results suggest that participatory policymaking marginally increases citizen trust in government. However, they also suggest that performance is the critical factor, and that participation alone cannot reverse the trust-damaging effect of poor performance. Although this research has limitations, it also has practical implications for public managers considering involving the public in the policymaking process, particularly when the costs of doing so are non-trivial.