Validating a scale for citizen trust in government organizations
| Author | Eva Knies,Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852315585950 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
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International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2017, Vol. 83(3) 583–601
Validating a scale for citizen trust
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852315585950
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Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen and
Eva Knies
Utrecht University School of Governance, The Netherlands
Abstract
Citizen trust in government at the macro level has been studied by public administration
scholars for many years. To further our understanding, assessing trust at the meso level
of government organizations is important to more precisely determine effects and
antecedents of trust at the organizational level. The organizational trust literature has
shown that organizational trustworthiness is multidimensional, but the extant literature
has not validated such measures in a public administration context. The proposed scale
builds on and adapts an existing organizational trust scale to a public administration
context. The ‘Citizen Trust in Government Organizations’ scale is validated using data
from two different samples (total n ¼ 991), resulting in a scale of nine items measuring
three dimensions: perceived competence, benevolence, and integrity. This scale can be
used by other researchers and is valuable to gain a more specific and multi-dimensional
understanding of trust in government organizations.
Points for practitioners
A major problem for government organizations worldwide is the lack of perceived
trustworthiness by the public. To tackle this problem, a way to measure it is needed,
but at the moment there are only generic measures to assert perceived trustworthiness
in a government organization. This article presents a first validation and incorporates
three dimensions: perceived competence, benevolence, and honesty. Practitioners can
use this scale and adapt to their relevant local context to identify specific trustworthi-
ness problems.
Keywords
citizen trust in government, meso-level trust, public administration, scale validation,
trust
Corresponding author:
Dr Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen, Utrecht University School of Governance, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, 3511 ZC
Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Email: s.g.grimmelikhuijsen@uu.nl
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 83(3)
Introduction
Citizen trust in government has been an important topic of study for public admin-
istration and political science scholars for many years (e.g. Carnevale, 1995;
Dalton, 2004; Fukuyama, 1995; Hetherington, 1998; Levi and Stoker, 2000;
Miller, 1974; Nyhan, 2000; Putnam, 2000; Tolbert and Mossberger, 2006; Van
der Meer, 2010; Vigoda-Gadot et al., 2010; Yang and Holzer, 2006). This has
led to important publications on, for instance, the determinants of trust in govern-
ment (Bovens and Wille, 2008; Hibbing and Theiss-Morse, 2001; Norris, 1998; Nye
et al., 1997; Van de Walle et al., 2008; Vigoda-Gadot, 2007; Vigoda-Gadot et al.,
2007), and on the effects of trust on society (e.g. Fukuyama, 1995; Putnam, 2000).
It is common practice to measure trust in government in general using single-
item measures of political trust (Hooghe, 2011: 275; Van de Walle, 2004) or the
one-dimensional multiple-item measure of the American National Election Studies
(Citrin, 1974; Poznyak et al., 2014). In contrast, studies measuring trust in a par-
ticular organization of government (e.g. this municipality or this public service) are
scarce. Van de Walle (2004: 146) noted that it is important to trace specific objects
of trust to determine the causes of trust in government organization more precisely,
as the antecedents of generalized trust and trust in a specific organization are not
necessarily the same (see also Van de Walle et al., 2005).
In addition, Kim (2005: 614) notes that public administration scholars have not
yet found an appropriate model of public trust. Assessing trust at the meso level,
i.e. trust in a specific government organization, may help in addressing this lacuna:
measuring trust in government organizations better allows us to identify particular
organizational contexts that relate to the antecedents of trust in that organization.
As a consequence, understanding trust in specific organizations can help to develop
more appropriate models for public trust in general.
However, if we want to measure trust in a specific government organization we
need a different measure than the one-dimensional measure that is common in
current research on trust at the macro level. The extant literature on organizational
trust has provided extensive evidence that organizational trust is based upon the
perceived trustworthiness of an organization and that this consists of multiple
dimensions. Given the complexity of the construct, it indeed seems most appro-
priate to assess trustworthiness empirically (McEvily and Tortoriello, 2011; Mayer
et al., 1995).
The multi-dimensional nature of organizational trustworthiness has been vali-
dated empirically in various studies (e.g. Cummings and Bromily, 1996; McKnight
et al., 2002; Mayer and Davis 1999), but not in a public administration context.
A validation for this context is needed, because trust researchers have acknowl-
edged that trust is inherently context-dependent (Bachmann, 2011; Granovetter,
1985; Hardin, 2002; McEvily and Tortoriello, 2011; Rousseau et al., 1998).
According to Bachmann (2011: 211), institutional context ‘shapes the way that
actors make their decisions, including the decision to either trust or not to trust
another actor’. In theory, taking context into account could lead to unique
Grimmelikhuijsen and Knies
585
measures for each specific organization. On the other hand, there is a need to
build a cumulative body of knowledge by using existing and validated measures
(McEvily and Tortoriello, 2011). To address a balance between these two ends, we
use an existing validated scale – to contribute to knowledge accumulation,
but adapt it to a public administration context – to address the contextual
nature of trust.
In this article we focus on measurement of trustworthiness, as it is a crucial basis
for trust in government organizations (Mayer et al., 1995). In line with insights
from organizational trust research we conceptualize this as a composite of three
dimensions: perceived competence, perceived benevolence and perceived integrity
(e.g. McEvily and Tortoriello, 2011; McKnight et al., 2002; Mayer et al., 1995).
These three dimensions of perceived trustworthiness are key elements that form the
basis for other facets of trust, such as trusting intentions and behavior (McEvily
and Tortoriello, 2011). Based on these theoretical notions we apply a psychometric
scale validation procedure using two different samples (n ¼ 991), which results in a
multi-dimensional measurement scale of nine items that can be used to gain a more
specific understanding of organizational trust in the context of public administra-
tion. We specifically test the scale in municipal government as a crucial case for
validation, as municipalities have the ties closest to citizens, and citizens have a
more direct stake in local issues (Pina et al., 2007; Piotrowski and Van Ryzin,
2007). Although our scale test is carried out in a municipal context, our scale
uses templates to leave room for flexible measurement of various public sector
organizations.
Conceptualizing trust
Three important and internationally widely used trust in government measures are
the Eurobarometer for European comparisons, World Values Survey for world-
wide comparisons (e.g. Van de Walle et al., 2008), or Pew and ANES for US-based
analyses (see, for critical discussions on ANES: Citrin, 1974; Poznyak et al., 2014).
Many researchers use these indicators to measure trust in government in general.
However, ‘trust in government’ in general refers to an amorphous entity and gives a
very generic understanding of its effects and antecedents (Fisher et al., 2010).
Especially when a single item measure is used, the ambiguity of the concept may
mean different things to different people.
To gain a more specific understanding of how trust works, researchers need
to focus on trust in specific government services or organizations (cf. Van de
Walle, 2004; Van de Walle et al., 2005). However, macro-level single-item mea-
sures are too limited to measure trust in specific organizations, as a number of
analyses on organizational trust have established evidence that organizational trust
depends on perceived trustworthiness, which consists of multiple dimensions
(e.g. McAllister, 1995; McEvily and Tortoriello, 2011; Mayer et al., 1995).1
There is no full agreement on how to conceptualize trust versus trustworthiness
exactly (Bachmann, 2011; McEvily and Tortoriello, 2011), but we view trust as a
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 83(3)
characteristic of a trustor (I have trust in . . .), whereas perceived trustworthiness
emphasizes the perceived characteristics of the trustee (I think X is trustworthy).
These characteristics are important to understand why some organizations are
more trusted than others. Although perceived trustworthiness is not trust per se,
it helps to build the foundation to further develop trust (Mayer et al., 1995: 717).
To understand the multidimensionality of perceived trustworthiness we will first
provide a definition of trust in general. Given the complexity of the concept, and
the multiple disciplines that have embarked on trust research, defining trust is not
easy....
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