Why People Participate in Collaborative Governance Through the Government Hotline

Abstract

The government hotline has a good application prospect in the field of public participation. To explore the influencing factors of public engagement through the hotline will provide practical solutions to improve the hotline system. Based on the theory of planned behavior, this study constructed a model of influencing factors for the public to use the hotline to participate in collaborative governance. Hypothesis testing was conducted by structural equation model, and regression analysis was used to explore the moderating effect of each influencing factor on different governance behaviors. The results showed that the attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, government trust and participation resources have a positive and significant impact on the public's behavioral intention to use the hotline to participate in collaborative governance, and the behavioral intention further leads to the actual governance behavior. The attitude was influenced by subjective norm and public trust, while attitude and participation resource significantly affected the perceived behavioral control. Public departments should adopt methods such as multi-channel integrated publicity, inter-departmental collaboration, and focusing function positioning to promote the public to participate in collaborative governance by using hotline.