Government Transparency Increases Trust in Government: Disentangling Effects of Government Transparency From Effects of Information

Past literature provides mixed results regarding the effect of government transparency on trust in government, with positive, negative and insignificant transparency-trust relationships being reported. It also fails to provide evidence to differentiate between competing theories for the same relationship. For example, increases in trust from government transparency can be explained using both agency theory and deliberative democracy theory. By adopting methodological improvements, our randomised experiment finds a stronger positive relationship between government transparency and trust in government than past literature. By including an extra control group where a non-government actor discloses the same information, we show the increase in trust is not due to the information disclosed but by the government act of transparency. This is consistent with deliberative democracy theory but inconsistent with information asymmetry arguments under agency theory. We also demonstrate how information can increase or decrease trust in government irrespective of any action by government of transparency. These findings contribute to both theory and practice by providing evidence that government transparency increases trust in government once this is disentangled from effects on citizens of the information itself. Practice and research should consider these separate effects: the effect of government transparency and the effect of information disclosed.