Beyond Digital Access: Unpacking the Digital Trust Paradox through Citizens’ Experiences of Local Government Services
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61255/jeemba.v4i6.1844Keywords:
Digital Government, Digital Trust, Citizen Experience, E-Government Services, Digital Service AcceptanceAbstract
Purpose – This study aims to examine citizens’ experiences in using local government digital services, explore how digital trust is constructed through service experiences, and identify the social and cultural conditions shaping citizens’ acceptance and continued use of digital government services
Design/methodology/approach – This study employed a qualitative descriptive-exploratory design. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with citizens and relevant local-government service actors, complemented by observation and document analysis. Data were analyzed through systematic hybrid coding and thematic analysis supported by NVivo 14, with source triangulation and member checking used to strengthen credibility.
Finding/Results – Citizens experienced digital services ambivalently. Convenience, flexibility, and time efficiency coexisted with technical failures, unclear instructions, document-upload problems, procedural uncertainty, and continuing needs for human assistance. Digital trust was constructed conditionally through four interrelated dimensions: system trust, institutional trust, data trust, and service trust. Acceptance was additionally shaped by digital literacy, family and social support, prior technological experience, and preferences for human assistance.
Originality/Value – The study refines the Digital Trust Paradox as a divergence between functional acceptance of digital services and conditional trust across system, institutional, data, and service dimensions. Citizens may value digital convenience and use online services while retaining conditional trust and returning to face-to-face assistance when uncertainty, complexity, or perceived risk increases. This citizen-experience perspective extends access-oriented accounts of digital government and provides an empirically grounded interpretive framework for future comparative and quantitative research.
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