Factors Affecting Public Servants’ Trust in Citizens: A Case Study of South Korean Central Government Officials

Abstract

Most studies of governance have emphasized that trust in government enhances government-citizen cooperation and induces the compliance of citizens with public policies. However, the scope of government-citizen collaboration has been limited to the trust that citizens hold toward their government. True collaborative governance would not work effectively if public servants did not have trust in citizens and were unwilling to engage with them in the public administration process. Given the small number of studies on the trust of public servants in citizens, we measure the trust in citizens by South Korean central government officials and analyze its determinants. Drawing upon surveys of about 250 public servants in South Korea’s central government, this study finds that factors affecting public servants’ trust in citizens are ranked as follows: their individual propensity to trust, their perception of citizens’ integrity, their engagement in coordination relations with citizens, their perception of citizens’ trust in government functions, their perception of citizens’ benevolence, and their engagement in command relations with citizens.