An interaction effect of perceived government response on COVID-19 and government agency’s use of ICT in building trust among citizens of Pakistan

Abstract

Purpose Among the digital age players, one of the fastest-growing digital channels is social media. In the past few years, developing nations’ government entities and political parties started using social media platforms to broadcast important information regarding decisions made at the state level. Pakistan is among those countries. Therefore, this study aims to empirically investigate the impact of the government agency’s provision of quality information on social media in establishing trust among citizens of Pakistan in a government agency with an underlying mechanism of citizens’ perception about agency’s transparency and responsiveness along with moderating role of perceived government response on COVID-19. Design/methodology/approach Data was collected from 542 social media followers of the Associated Press of Pakistan (a government news agency) and was analysed using measurement and structural models by using SmartPLS 3.3.0. Findings Results revealed that the interactive effect of government response on COVID-19 and government agency’s provision of quality information on social media strengthens the association of government presence on social media with citizens’ perception of the agency’s transparency and responsiveness and their trust in the agency. Practical implications Furthermore, the current study will contribute to the body of knowledge regarding the government agency’s use of information and communication technology and the government’s resultant response on COVID-19. Originality/value An extensive study of the literature revealed a gap available regarding the mediatory role of the citizens’ perception about agency’s transparency and responsiveness in between the association of government agency’s provision of quality information on social media and citizens’ trust in the government agency. Also, to the best of the author’s knowledge, no study to date has investigated the moderating role of government response on COVID-19 in between the relationship of government agency’s provision of quality on social media and citizens’ trust in the government agency and their perception about agency’s transparency and responsiveness. Thus, the current study aimed to address these existing gaps in the literature.

Antecedents of Public Trust in Government During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia: Mediation of Perceived Religious Values

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Perceived effectiveness of e-governance as an underlying mechanism between good governance and public trust: a case of Indonesia

“…Moreover, researchers suggested that perceived transparency leads to increased public trust in government (Mansoor, 2021a;Moreno-Albarracı ´n et al, 2020). While overall public trust is based on fairness and expectation from the authorities that make decisions to safeguard people's welfare (Houston and Harding, 2013) and technology can aid in making this information accessible to the public.…”

Interactive Effects of Stoicism and Religious Coping on Psychological Distress, Fatigue and Intercultural Communication: Muslim Health Workers in Bali

“…Besides, the measure's convergent and discriminant validity was assessed. For stoicism and two items, i.e., ST8 and ST11, and for physical fatigue, two items, i.e., PF3 and PF12 with factor loadings less than 0.5, were excluded from the analysis as per instructions of Hair et al (2012) based on their high impact on AVE and the reliability of the whole construct (Mansoor, 2021b). As the factor loadings of all other indicator variables were in the range with a significant loading of each item (p < 0.001) onto its underlying variable and the AVE of latent variables was above 0.50 for all study constructs, convergent validity was established (Hair et al, 2010;Noor et al, 2021).…”