Factors Affecting Public Servants' Trust in Citizens

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Factors Affecting Public Servants’

Trust in Citizens: A Case Study of
South Korean Central Government
Officials
a a
Sook Jong Lee & Hi Jeong Yu
a
Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea
Published online: 25 Mar 2014.
To cite this article: Sook Jong Lee & Hi Jeong Yu (2013) Factors Affecting Public Servants’ Trust
in Citizens: A Case Study of South Korean Central Government Officials, International Review of
Public Administration, 18:3, 85-114, DOI: 10.1080/12294659.2013.10805265
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/12294659.2013.10805265
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© International Review of Public Administration
2013, Vol. 18, No. 3
FACTORS AFFECTING PUBLIC SERVANTS’

TRUST IN CITIZENS:
A CASE STUDY OF SOUTH KOREAN
CENTRAL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS*
SOOK JONG LEE

&
HI JEONG YU
Most studies of governance have emphasized that trust in government

enhances government-citizen cooperation and induces the compliance
of citizens with public policies. However, the scope of government-citizen
collaboration has been limited to the trust that citizens hold toward their
government. True collaborative governance would not work effectively if
public servants did not have trust in citizens and were unwilling to engage with
them in the public administration process. Given the small number of studies
on the trust of public servants in citizens, we measure the trust in citizens
by South Korean central government officials and analyze its determinants.
Drawing upon surveys of about 250 public servants in South Korea’s central
government, this study finds that factors affecting public servants’ trust
in citizens are ranked as follows: their individual propensity to trust, their
perception of citizens’ integrity, their engagement in coordination relations
with citizens, their perception of citizens’ trust in government functions,
their perception of citizens’ benevolence, and their engagement in command
relations with citizens.
Key words: public servants’ trust in citizens, propensity to trust,

trustworthiness, interactions between government and citizens,
citizens’ trust in government
86 Factors Affecting Public Servants’ Trust in Citizens: Vol. 18, No. 3
A Case Study of South Korean Central Government Officials
INTRODUCTION
In responding to market or state failure, governance has been regarded as an alternative

interest coordination mechanism that can lead interdependent actors to cooperate. Most
scholars agree that it is necessary for actors with common policy interests to engage in
dialogue, networking, and collaboration if governance is to be effectively practiced. Despite
expected benefits, however, such cooperative interactions do not happen frequently unless
certain institutional mechanisms constantly guide actors to engage each other. How to
coordinate ideas or interests among different policy actors is much more complex than
assumed in the studies of governance. Actors engaged in dialogue and communication are
often challenged by their lack of representativeness (Jessop, 2000). Participants seeking

personal gain will even intentionally block citizen involvement in the decision-making
process. Moreover, the collaborative process involving diverse participants has limited
efficacy in generating policy change, because participants often address issues outside the
venue where public policy is actually decided (Konisky and Beierle, 2001). These problems
have been considered major reasons that participatory processes backfire and cause public
dissatisfaction (Smith and McDonough, 2001).
From the perspective of governance upholding the value of participation and
collaboration (Rhodes, 1997; Pierre and Peters, 2000; Eun, 2009), trust enables cooperation
and facilitates actors to participate in the decision-making process with a willingness to
resolve conflicts. Even if individual or organizational actors intend to negotiate with each
other or form a partnership, they will still find it very difficult to forge such a relationship
due to the lack of information or shared values. Given this gap between good intentions and
cooperative practices, trust is regarded as the key element in reducing the transaction cost
of reaching a consensus on collective actions. Accordingly, many studies have focused on
both the effects of trust on public policies and the correlation between citizens’ participation
and their trust.
While there is a growing body of literature and surveys on citizens’ trust in government,
limited attention has been paid to studies on trust in citizens by government officials.
Given that trust is mutual and reciprocal, it is important to research the trust of government
toward citizens in order to develop collaboration-based strategies, which are usually aimed
at expanding public-private partnerships and enhancing citizen participation (S. Kim,
2010). In this regard, Yang (2005, 2006) suggests that public servants’ trust in citizens is
important in building credible democratic governance. He has found that factors such as
prior experience, procedural orientation, and criticism of the government affect public
servants’ trust in citizens; increased trust will have a positive effect on their efforts to
involve citizens.1 In public-private partnerships, it is public servants who can take the
initiative in cultivating trust between government and citizens, since they have better
channels and mediums by which to engage citizens who tend to regard government distant
and unreachable. Once public servants trust citizens, their efforts to involve and empower
December 2013 Sook Jong Lee & Hi Jeong Yu 87
citizens increase. Yang emphasizes the need for a public organization culture facilitating
the development of trust in citizens as a socially embedded attitude. This kind of culture
is not certainly embedded in most societies of East Asia, whose bureaucracy is too wise
to need citizens’ ideas, or too rigidly hierarchical to engage citizens in the policy process.
South Korea is perhaps the most Confucian society, respecting competent bureaucrats and
regarding elitist rule as natural. Its successful modernization led by bureaucratic planning
also has empowered bureaucrats over citizens in defining public interest and setting policy
agendas.
This paper studies the behavior of Korean public servants from the perspective of their
trust in citizens. The reason we pay attention to public servants’ trust in citizens is that trust
determines public servants’ attitude toward interacting and working with citizens to resolve
public problems. If there is a trust deficit among public servants in South Korea, it is
important to know how institutional mechanisms need to be designed to reduce the negative
influence of such a trust deficit. From the case study of South Korea, we may be able to
correct the assumptions and reasoning of collaborative governance studies that are largely
based on the U.S. experience. First, this article reviews the literature on public servants’
trust in citizens. Then, it discusses theoretical arguments about the factors affecting public
servants’ trust in citizens. Next, we examine the factors affecting public servants’ trust in
citizens, such as the propensity to trust, the trustworthiness of citizens, the interactions with
citizens, the perceptions of citizens’ trust in government. The relative weights of influential
factors are checked through multiple regression analysis. The last section discusses findings
and implications. The data set is drawn from surveys of about 250 public administrators in
South Korea’s central government.
SOUTH KOREAN BUREAUCRACY AND CITIZENS
Since the economic crisis in 1997, Korean administrative reform has been pursued
based on the ideas of new public management (NPM). To adjust to a new global economic
environment, the public sector should overcome its weaknesses, including extreme
centralization, lack of transparency, rigidity, and low performance (P. Kim, 2000).
Therefore, the Korean government set three goals of administrative reform: to structure
operations and provide service according to market-oriented, performance-oriented, and
customer-oriented principles (S. Lee, 1999). To achieve these goals, reform activities
have been primarily aimed at organizational restructuring and operational system change
(C. Lee, 2004). However, citizens were more interested in pushing their government to
be more transparent and accountable. The Korean government responded with reform
efforts focused on enhancing openness and participation, and this led to the early adoption
of e-government (S. Kim, 2010). This administrative reform in the larger context of
political liberalization has led the shift from bureaucratic authoritarianism to participatory
administration in a relatively short period.

As the Korean government introduced the NPM-initiated market principles, public
servants had to be responsive to citizens’ assessment of administrative service quality.
With the enactment of “The Charter of Administrative Service” in 1998, public servants
were required to precisely examine the range of service recipients and encourage them to
participate in service quality evaluation. Since Korea’s democratization in 1987, citizen
participation in government has become active through two methods. First, the change
in institutional environment has facilitated citizen participation in government. With
respect to the development of democratic political systems, the enforcement of referenda,
public hearings, and advisory committees allow citizens to engage more in the public
policy process. In addition, e-government has aided citizens to participate in online policy
discussions and cyber monitoring. With these changes, Korean public servants came to
perceive citizens as “activists” involved in public life rather than as passive subjects or
disinterested voters.
Next, the rise of civil society leads citizens to pay more attention to what the
government does, and then to promote citizens’ political participation through voluntary
associations (Park et al., 2005; Lee and Yu, 2010). Citizens’ activities on the level of
grassroots participation have increased not only the opportunities to express policy demands
and support, but also the voluntary services in policy implementation (e.g., education,
health, and welfare) (J. Park, 2000). This type of citizen participation in government affects
the development of government performance (e.g., effectiveness and efficiency), and
accordingly affects public servants’ perceptions of critical citizens and the role of citizens as
partners in governance.
Korean public servants have long been criticized for holding a superior attitude
toward citizens and being reluctant to involve citizens in governmental affairs. This is
often attributed to the bureaucratic authoritarianism of the Confucian culture based on the
meritocratic recruitment of able public officials (K. Lee, 1999; Yoo, 1995). How much have
these attitudes changed with the introduction of mechanisms encouraging participatory
administration? Although Korean public servants are more exposed to collaboration
with citizens than in the past, there are few studies on the change in their perception of
citizens. According to the collaborative governance theory, government tends to change its
behavior by adopting collaboration initiatives or management in order to meet increasingly
diversified public demands, and as a consequence, citizen participation is understood as
not restricting the role of government. Such changes in the behavior of public servants
include activities associated with accurate problem identification, efficient communication,
appropriate selection of participants, and conflict management (Sullivan and Skelcher,
2002).
Under the democratic social circumstances, South Korean public servants have
also tried to improve management capacity by relaxing their bureaucratic control and
adopting more collaborative interactions with citizens. Whether these new experiences
of collaboration efforts have caused public servants to trust citizens and engage them
more in the public policy process or paradoxically have made them distrust citizens and
withdraw from such collaboration efforts is an interesting question to ask. Although
there are no longitudinal survey data to observe public officials’ behavioral change, in
our occasional conversations, they have revealed their mistrust of vocal citizen groups
and their perception of collaboration efforts as time consuming with no tangible benefits.
If public servants do not trust citizens in terms of their motives and contribution to the
policy process, collaboration efforts will remain superficial, simply following imposed
rules and failing to generate expected effects of policy effectiveness and accountability by
practicing collaborative governance. Therefore, if the Korean government’s participatory
administration is to succeed, it is very important to understand the conditions under which

public servants would develop trust in citizens. In this vein, this study aims to analyze how
public officials’ perception of citizens is affected by factors embedded in the administrative
reforms designed to strengthen collaboration with citizens.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES
Trust in Citizens
Despite the diverse definitions of trust, most scholars agree that trust is a psychological
state that involves a willingness to take risks based upon positive expectations of the
intentions or behavior of a trustee. The case of public servants’ trust in citizens shares
this fundamental attribute of trust. However, trust in this case is unique since trustees are
citizens whom public servants, trusters, serve often anonymously. As there have been so
few studies on administrators’ trust in citizens, we will examine the factors affecting trust
in citizens from existing social science discussions on trust. According to these discussions,
the factors affecting the trust level of individuals can be categorized into two dimensions.
The first dimension is individual perceptions related to disposition and cognition that are
largely shaped by previous experience. The second group of factors includes institutional
and organizational influences. On the basis of this distinction, Yang (2005, 2006) found
that among factors related to individual perceptions, the propensity to trust others and prior
experience have a positive effect on public administrators’ trust in citizens. On the other
hand, public administrators’ perception that citizens are criticizing them is found to have a
negative effect on their trust in citizens.
Yang (2005: 276) defines trust in citizens as “administrators’ beliefs that the citizens who
are affected by their work (or whom they are serving), when involved in the administrative
(or governing) process, will act in a fashion that is helpful (or beneficial) to administrators’
performance (or goal fulfillment).” Public servants’ trust in citizens is formed through
fiduciary relations rather than economic exchange, so it should be understood through an
ethical approach. Since public servants are agents serving the principal (i.e., anonymous
people) with or without real face-to-face interactions as part of their active duty, their
trust relationship with citizens is essentially different from that of individuals with other
acquainted or well-known individuals. Public officials can develop negative feelings and
mistrust from their interactions with specific citizens who promote their own interests at the
expense of the public interest. However, these particular incidents cannot legitimize civil
servants to mistrust the citizens they are supposed to serve. While Korean bureaucrats, like
those of other Asian countries, are often aloof elitists over the masses, serving the public
has been traditionally emphasized as an ethical duty of their position. Their trust in citizens
follows the logic that regards trust as a matter of ethics or rightful duty, not a strategy for
maximizing one’s utility. In the agent-principal relationship between public servants and
citizens, public servants are expected to be unilaterally accountable to citizens, and their
trust in citizens is anticipated as a norm, however unsubstantiated in reality.
Encouraging more citizen participation in the public policy process has been recognized
as a proper response to declining citizen trust in government in many industrialized
countries. Citizens’ low trust in their government and the associated cynicism often center
on the integrity, purpose, and effectiveness of government and its officials (Berman, 1997).
Accordingly, scholars have argued for various strategies of better performance, competency,
and transparency to improve citizens’ trust in government. Among them, the strategy to
encourage more participation by citizens is widely recognized to be useful. It generally
held to be possible to restore citizen trust in government by the government showing trust
toward citizens first and involving them actively in administrative activities. Citizens’
perception of how much public servants trust them is related to the feeling of connection
to the government. This feeling is formed through citizens’ perception of how much public
officials care about what people like them think (King and Stivers, 1998). Wang and Wart
(2007) also explain that public participation in government, primarily through intermediate
administrative behavior such as public consensus building, ethical behavior, accountability,
and service competence, leads to public trust in government.
However, the task of implementing citizen participation in administration is not easy.
Citizens who participate in government programs often butt against bureaucratic barriers
such as information control, exclusionary decision, and lack of communication (King et
al., 1998), which makes them feel powerless. Consequently, citizens become angry about
public servants’ passive attitude toward removing these barriers. Public servants feel this
antagonism on the part of citizens and conclude that their participation is disadvantageous
rather than advantageous to the government. Considering this demerit of citizen
participation programs, public servants have come to take risks in allocating resources,
paying costs, and facing citizen hostility when they try to initiate such programs (Irvin
and Stansbury, 2004). In this situation, if public servants have trust in citizens, they are
more willing to take risks and carry out citizen-involvement efforts. Trust in citizens leads
public servants to share information and communicate with citizens horizontally in the
participative process. This shows that “trust is not a behavior (e.g., cooperation) or a choice
(e.g., taking a risk), but an underlying psychological condition that can cause or result from
such action” (Rousseau et al., 1998: 395).
In a nutshell, public servants’ trust in the citizens they serve matters for the efficacy of
collaborative governance. Many democratic governments have introduced institutional
mechanisms enabling citizen participation in administration in order to stop the declining
trust of citizens in their own government. However, they often have failed to restore
public trust since these mechanisms are either hardly used by resistant bureaucrats or only
superficially implemented as a matter of formality. Whether public servants trust citizens
as collaborative partners is critical in rendering government reform efforts for participatory
administration substantially successful. When public servants trust citizens, they tend to
involve citizens in the public policy process more actively and invest time and energy to
empower citizens through sharing knowledge and teaching deliberation skills. Citizens feel
a sense of respect and political efficacy from their interactions with public officials who pay
attention to their concerns and care about their participation.
Factors Affecting Trust in Citizens
Trust forms through both a truster’s individual disposition, cognitive process, and
experience, and certain organizational or social factors surrounding a truster (Kramer,
1999). Trust in citizens forms through interpersonal relations with specific citizens as well
as various social sources, such as encounters with citizens, professional education, and
media reports (Yang, 2006). Therefore, we need to explore factors affecting public servants’
trust in citizens at both the individual and societal level.
Trust studies have emphasized individual factors affecting trust, such as a truster’s
individual propensity to trust others and his or her cognitive reasoning of why a trustee is
trustworthy. As long as trust between government and citizens is democratic in nature and
affected by political and social cultures (Yang, 2006), it is reasonable to infer that social
factors rather than organizational factors, including structure, culture, and management
philosophies, would affect the level of trust in citizens. Among social factors, we regard
past or current experience of interaction with citizens and public servants’ perception
of citizens’ trust in government as important. Let us discuss four factors we regard as
explanatory factors and several hypothesis developed from these debates.
Propensity to Trust. Propensity to trust is defined as general willingness to trust others
(Mayer et al., 1995). Considering that it is based on dispositional orientations such as
personality, propensity to trust has been referred to as dispositional or generalized trust
(Rotter, 1971; Kramer, 1999; Stack, 1978). In many quantitative studies, propensity to trust
is considered as the antecedent of individuals’ actual trust level because it involves values
such as general standards or principles. A person’s value system guides behavior and the
interpretation of experience by furnishing the criteria that a person can use to evaluate
and make sense of events and actions in the surrounding world (Jones and George, 1998).
Accordingly, the propensity to trust tends to be stable in specific situations or relationships
and acts as the filter that generates individual differences in the interpretation of others’
behavior. For these reasons, the effect of propensity to trust is retained even if it is possible
for a truster to get information about the trustworthiness of a trustee (Colquitt et al., 2007).
Applying this propensity to trust as an important factor in the case of public servants’ trust
in citizens, we developed the following first hypothesis.
Hypothesis 1: Public servants’ propensity to trust positively affects trust in citizens.

Trustworthiness. The characteristics and actions of a trustee lead a person to be more or

less trusted (Mayer et al., 1995). The characteristics that inspire trust are known collectively
as trustworthiness, and are therefore regarded as trust antecedents, like propensity to trust.
From a cognitive point of view, trust is based on “good reasons” that constitute evidence
of trustworthiness (Lewis and Weigert, 1985). Since a truster considers the trustworthiness
of a trustee while developing a working relationship (Gabarro, 1978), public servants
perceive the trustworthiness of citizens through encounters with them (e.g., decision
making). Although there are many characteristics that create trust, three components of
trustworthiness have been commonly discussed in the literature: ability, benevolence, and
integrity.
Ability is “relevant to the knowledge and skills that a trustee needs to have influence
within some specific domain” (Gabarro, 1978; Mayer et al., 1995). The specific domain
can be classified into two areas: the domain of technical expertise associated with the job
and the unfamiliar domain. In some cases, competence or expertness is used as a synonym
for ability (Mayer et al., 1995). In this regard, citizens’ ability involves the knowledge and
skills that enable citizens to have meaningful influence in certain public decision arenas
(Yang, 2006). Public servants may trust citizens who have the knowledge to understand
program implementation and to inform government what it must do for citizens. Citizen
participation encourages government to allocate resources and costs to educate citizens.
Informed and involved citizens become experts who can understand technically difficult
situations and therefore seek community-wide solutions (Irvin and Stansbury, 2004). A
belief in citizens’ ability is considered the basis of trust that leads public servants to involve
citizens in a specific domain of the policy process.
A trustee’s character, such as honesty, fairness, openness, caring motives and
intentions, and predictability, is another trust antecedent. While ability refers to the “can-
do” component of trustworthiness by describing whether a trustee has the skills and
abilities needed to act in an appropriate fashion, a trustee’s character refers to the “will-do”
component of trustworthiness by describing whether the trusted will choose to use those
skills and abilities to act in the best interest of a truster (Colquitt et al., 2007). A trustee’s
character is classified into two components: benevolence and integrity.
Benevolence is defined as “the extent to which a trustee is believed to want to do good

for a truster, aside from any profit motives” (Mayer et al., 1995; Colquitt et al., 2007).
When either a trustee’s motivation or some specific relationship is considered as the major
cause of trust, benevolence, implying the positive orientation of a trustee, is a key factor in
the assessment of trustworthiness (Hovland et al., 1953). Accordingly, loyalty, openness,
caring, and supportiveness are often used as synonyms for benevolence (Mayer et al.,
1995). Citizens’ benevolence refers to how much they are interested in others’ welfare. In
other words, citizens are motivated not individualistically (i.e.,, to seek private interest) but
cooperatively (i.e., to seek the public interest).
Integrity refers to “the truster’s perceptions that the trustee adheres to sound moral and
ethical principles” (Mayer et al., 1995; Colquitt et al., 2007). The assessment of integrity is
based on consistent behavior, interpersonal communication styles, and fairness. Therefore,
fairness, justice, consistency, and promise fulfillment are synonyms for integrity (Mayer et
al., 1995). In this context, citizens’ integrity refers to a consistent attitude based on sharing
a faith in constitutional values and agreement with some basic common objectives during
participation in government (Yang, 2006).
Public servants’ impressions of specific citizens’ benevolence or integrity tend to
be generalized to other citizens. Public servants may evaluate citizens’ benevolence or
integrity when they engage in the activities of citizen involvement (e.g., public hearings,
advisory committees, volunteer programs). In particular, the more experience they have
in engagement with conflicts caused by citizens’ desire for personal gain, the lower
they perceive the level of citizens’ benevolence or integrity to be. In contrast, the more
experience they have of citizens’ voluntary participation in programs where the purpose of
citizen participation is to promote the public interest, the higher they perceive the level of
citizens’ benevolence or integrity to be.
According to the conceptual characteristics, it is reasonable to infer that citizens’
ability, benevolence, and integrity independently affect public servants’ trust levels. Our
study of public servants’ trust in citizens results in the following hypotheses regarding its
relationship to citizens’ ability, benevolence, and integrity.
Hypothesis 2: Trustworthiness will positively affect public servants’ trust in citizens.

Hypothesis 2a: The more public servants perceive citizens’ ability, the more they will
trust citizens.
Hypothesis 2b: The more public servants perceive citizens’ benevolence, the more they
will trust citizens.
Hypothesis 2c: The more public servants perceive citizens’ integrity, the more they will
trust citizens.
Interactions with Citizens. Public servants, as neutral officials and professional experts,
tend to view what citizens know as beneficial for their administrative duties. Given this,
they seek partnerships between government and citizens (King et al., 1998). Public
servants’ roles vary depending on the diverse interactions of this partnership. Vigoda (2002)
classified the different forms of government-citizen relations as an evolutionary continuum
of interactions: coerciveness, delegation, responsiveness, and collaboration.2 According to
his analysis, the perception of partnership between parties proliferates and therefore citizens
tend to actively engage in the process of administrative change and reforms. Shergold (2008)
categorized the coordinating mechanisms to achieve outcomes in public service into four
types: command, which is the process of centralized control with clear lines of hierarchical
authority; coordination, which is the process of collective decision making imposed on
participating institutions; cooperation, which is the process of sharing ideas and resources
for mutual benefit; and collaboration, which is the process of shared creation brokered
between autonomous institutions.
Despite a greater orientation toward collaborative interaction through horizontal
networks, these mixed forms appear more complex in reality because actors still continue
to interact through implicit hierarchical relationships. Genuine collaboration should involve
recognition of interdependence within the network of institutional structures, where not
only government but also stakeholders have real responsibility for outcomes (Shergold,
2008; Ansell and Gash, 2008). Accordingly, while the role of government is to empower
citizens to perform voluntary actions, citizens as activists are deeply involved in public life
and community activities (Vigoda, 2002).
In the collaborative process, sharing responsibility is critical for trust, for it can reduce
antagonism that is generated in the process of actors exploring mutual gains (Ansell and
Gash, 2008). In that sense, the more a public servant is involved in the consensus-oriented
collaborative process, the more he or she perceives the importance of trust in leading
stakeholders’ commitment to achieving outcomes. On the other hand, the more a public
servant is involved in hierarchical relationships, command, or coordination, the less he
or she perceives the importance of trust, because the centralized control of government is
considered to be the most effective means to achieve a particular outcome.
Our study provides statistical analysis of the relationships between public servants’ trust
in citizens and their interactions with citizens. The types of interaction between government
and citizens are classified into four categories: command, coordination, cooperation, and
collaboration.
Hypothesis 3a: The more public servants interact with citizens in a command
relationship, the less they will trust citizens.
Hypothesis 3b: The more public servants interact with citizens in a coordination
relationship, the less they will trust citizens.
Hypothesis 3c: The more public servants interact with citizens in a cooperation
relationship, the more they will trust citizens.
Hypothesis 3d: The more public servants interact with citizens in a collaboration
relationship, the more they will trust citizens.
Perceptions of Citizens’ Trust in Government. Considering that mutual trust is

a precondition for cooperation (Gambetta, 2000), the level of trust in government is
recognized as important to public servants because they must interact with many and
unspecified partners to produce public goods and services.
Scholars have defined trust in government as political trust, which is basically an
evaluative orientation toward the government. It is based on how well the government is
operating according to people’s normative expectations (Hetherington, 1998). In the sense
that trust in government arises from the notion of a fiduciary relationship, the government
should be an effective and ethical agent to earn citizens’ trust (Thomas, 1998). For this
reason, there are two dimensions of trust in government: the functional dimension, which
consists of competency as well as performance, and the ethical dimension, consisting of
justice, transparency, and accountability.
Trust between government and citizens is democratic in nature and is affected by
political and social cultures (Yang, 2006). The post-materialist value change encourages
citizens to be more critical of governmental authority and brings about an erosion of
confidence in public institutions (Inglehart, 1997). In addition, economic development
and affluence lead critical citizens to be active in protest actions (e.g., demonstrating and
campaigning) based on a priority of autonomy and self-expression. The shift to a post-
modern political environment exposes public servants to diminishing citizen trust in
government. Moreover, negative coverage of the government by the media reinforces an
unpopular image of government (King et al., 1998).
Given the interest in citizen preferences, citizens’ policy evaluations come to be
considered the most powerful tool in assisting government organizations to adjust to those
preferences (Wart, 1995). Citizens’ criticism of public organizations, however, leads to
negative perceptions and attitudes on the part of public servants. Citizens’ criticism makes
working with the public more challenging to the extent that public servants try to reduce
the risk of criticism by avoiding efforts to involve citizens. Public servants feel alienated,
cynical, or even frightened of the public (King & Stivers, 1998; Yang, 2005). Consequently,
the lower public servants perceive the level of trust in government to be, the less they will
trust citizens.
Hypothesis 4: Public servants’ perception of citizen trust in government will positively

affect trust in citizens.
Hypothesis 4a: The higher public servants perceive the level of trust in governmental
functions to be, the more they will trust citizens.
Hypothesis 4b: The higher public servants perceive the level of trust in governmental
ethics to be, the more they will trust in citizens.
Figure 1 illustrates four variables identified as individual and social factors affecting
public servants’ trust in citizens. While retaining two variables from Yang’s (2005)
study, propensity to trust and perceptions of citizens’ trust in government, we added
“trustworthiness” and “interactions with citizens” to each category of individual and social
factors. These last two variables have been regarded as important in the literature on trust
and governance studies.
Figure 1. Individual and Social Factors Affecting Public Servants’ Trust in Citizens
Individual Factors
● Propensity to trust
● Trustworthiness
Trust in Citizens
Social Factors
● Interactions with citizens
● Perceptions of citizens' trust
in government
METHODOLOGY
Sample
That data set used in this study was drawn from the structured questionnaire with
which we surveyed central government public servants of the Republic of Korea during
the months of October and November, 2011. Given the difficulties in conducting a survey
of public servants from all ministries of the central government, we instead decided to
survey 300 trainees at the Central Officials Training Institute who had experience working
in various government offices. Thirty officials of the Foreign Ministry were added to the
survey later on. The response rate from these 330 officials was 77 percent. Respondents
filled out the questionnaire by themselves. To preserve the confidentiality of all respondents,
no identifiers were placed on the questionnaires.
Measurement and Instruments
The questionnaire was designed to ensure accuracy, validity, and reliability (see
appendices B and C).3 Public servants’ trust in citizens, which is a dependent variable in
this paper, was measured by a single question: How much do you trust in citizens? We also
introduced four explanatory variables, consisting of three perceptions of public servants and
one interaction pattern of public servants with citizens.
The three perception variables are propensity to trust, trustworthiness of citizens, and
perceptions of citizens’ trust in government. Measuring the first independent variable,
the propensity to trust, is checking the trust level of public servants themselves, since this
propensity would influence their trust in citizens. Public servants’ propensity to trust was
measured by their agreeability to three statements: “Most people can be trusted,” “People
treat me fairly,” and “People tend to help others.” Cronbach’s alpha was 0.88, demonstrating
the high reliability of this measure as an explanatory variable. The two independent
variables, public servants’ perception of the trustworthiness of citizens and public servants’
perception of citizens’ trust in government, were checked for confirmatory factor analysis.
The trustworthiness variable comprises three indicators: ability, benevolence, and integrity,
which were statistically meaningful at the p=.001 level, and their Cronbach’s alphas were
all above 0.6. Therefore, indicators used to measure the trustworthiness variable were all
verified to be appropriate.
The third independent variable is public servants’ interaction patterns with citizens,
which was assessed with the question, “How frequently have you engaged in the kinds
of public-private partnership?” The last independent variable, public servants’ perception
of citizens’ trust in government, has two dimensions. A functional dimension is based on
public servants’ perception of how citizens would view government performance and
government capacity. The other dimension is ethical; for example, how public servants
perceive citizens’ trust in government in terms of justice, transparency, and accountability.
With a few exceptions, including interaction variables and a section for demographic
information, the survey consisted of Likert-scale items. The scales used range in value from
1 (lowest) to 7 (highest).
Control Variables
Five control variables are included in the survey: gender, age, education, tenure, and
citizen contact. The citizen contact experience is used as a control because it has been
shown to significantly influence trust in citizens (King et al., 1998; Yang, 2005; 2006).
The following item was used to measure the citizen contact experience: “How frequently
have you contacted with citizens?” This study also included tenure as a control variable,
measured with the question, “How many years have you worked in Korean central
government?” Other variables were dichotomized: Gender (1 = female, 0 = male),
Education (1 = university graduate, 0 = non–university graduate).

RESULTS
Sample Description
Our data analyses are based on the response rate of 77 percent, or 255 respondents. On
average, the respondents had 23 years of working experience in the public sector. There
were far more male respondents (87 percent) than female respondents (11 percent). The
respondents covered a wide range in terms of age, but the majority were middle aged (40–49,
52 percent). The majority of respondents were also university graduates (80 percent).
Descriptive Statistics
A total of 28 questions were asked to measure both dependent and independent

variables. Answers to all questions except the those regarding public servants’ interaction
with citizens were marked on the 7-point Likert scale. The statistical results are shown in
Table 1.
On average, the level of public servants’ trust in citizens was 4.84 on the 7-point Likert
scale. This was lower than their general propensity to trust people (M=5.01, SD=0.93).
Obviously, Korean government initiatives for public servants to collaborate with citizens
have not been functional in building public servants’ trust in citizens. Public servants’
assessment of the trustworthiness of citizens showed little difference in terms of integrity
(M=4.88, SD=1.00), benevolence (M=4.35, SD=0.96), and ability (M=4.28, SD=0.84).
In other words, public servants perception of citizens as morally virtuous is greater than
their view of citizens’ ability by 0.60 point. As for the citizens’ trust in government,
public servants consider that citizens would evaluate their government more favorably in
ethical questions (M=4.70, SD=1.12) than functional ones (M=4.41, SD=0.95), although
the difference is small. Kim et al. (2009) also found that Korean citizens trust less their
government’s performance and capacity than they trust government ethics, such as
transparency and accountability.4 It is interesting to note that Korean public servants trust
citizens’ moral integrity more than their ability, and they also expect citizens to evaluate
their government more highly on its ethical than its functional performance. This saliency
of moral judgment in two-way public-private interactions seems to explain both phenomena
common in Korea: 1) bureaucrats expect private citizens to put the public interest ahead of
their own interest, and 2) occasional ethical scandals make functionally able government
falter with the rapid depletion of trust.
Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for Variables

N Mean Standard Deviation Median
Trust in citizens 253 4.84 0.91 5.00
Propensity to trust 254 5.01 0.93 5.00
Ability 247 4.28 0.84 4.33
Trustworthiness Benevolence 248 4.35 0.96 4.33
Integrity 247 4.88 1.00 5.00
Perceptions of Functions 254 4.41 0.95 4.40
citizens’ trust in
Ethics 254 4.70 1.12 4.67
government
More than
1–3 times 1–3 times 1–3 times

N 4 times No contact
per month per quarter per year
per month
Citizen contacts 254 21.2% 16.7% 20.0% 21.6% 20.4%
Command 235 9.8% 15.3% 23.0% 23.0% 28.9%
Patterns of Coordination 236 5.1% 14.4% 19.1% 28.0% 33.5%
engagement Cooperation 235 5.5% 15.3% 21.7% 24.7% 32.8%
Collaboration 233 6.9% 13.3% 18.9% 24.5% 36.5%

Our survey revealed that the frequency of public servants’ interaction with citizens
varies. About one-fifth of public servants interact with citizens more than four times per
month, 1–3 times per quarter, or 1–3 times per year. If we add the result for 1–3 times per
month to that for more than 4 times per month, about 38% interact with citizens more
than once per month. However, 20.4 percent of public servants answered that they do
not have any contact with citizens. This proportion of no contact may reflect the sample
characteristics of central government officials, who would interact with citizens less than
do local government officials. When public servants were asked how often they engaged in
a public-private partnership, the no-contact ratio increased to about one-third. Interestingly,
public servants whose tasks were related to “command” tended to interact with citizens
more than those whose tasks were either “coordination” or “collaboration.” Why public
servants who command tend to interact with citizens more is an interesting question that
needs further study. It may be because the role of officials in the Korean central government
is still hierarchical, with strong power to intervene in the private sector and the life of
citizens.
Factors Affecting Public Servants’ Trust in Citizens
Table 2 shows the correlations of variables. The correlation between propensity to trust
and trust in citizens is relatively strong (r=.580, p<.01). All three variables making up the
trustworthiness dimensions—ability, benevolence, and integrity—are positively correlated
with trust in citizens (r=.371, p<.01; r=.418, p<.01; r=.430, p<.01). The cooperation and
collaboration variables are positively correlated with trust in citizens, but the correlation
is weak (r=.110, p<.10; r=.127, p<.10). The perception of citizens’ trust in governmental
functions and governmental ethics is also positively correlated with trust in citizens (r=.417,
p<.01; r=.372, p<.01). Finally, none of the control variables is correlated with trust in
citizens.
Table 2. Correlations of Variables

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
1. Trust in Citizens
2. Gender -.064a
3. Age -.030a -.346
4. Education .079a .092a .264
5. Tenure .004a -.276 .851 -.315
6. Citizen Contacts .063a -.007a .194 -.058a .139
7. Propensity to trust .580 .054a -.093a .049a .018a .063a
8. Ability .371 -.017a -068a -.051a .109 .124 .296
9. Benevolence .418 -.112 .096a .084 .096a .051a .209 .522
10. Integrity .430 -.079a .019a .086 .054a .101a .191 .644 .759
11. Command .092a -071a .200 -.036a .171 .353 .047a .088a -.027a -.026a
12. Coordination .055a .063a .139 .031a .070a .231 .140 .083a .025a -.020a .729
13. Cooperation .110 .132 .034a -.116 .001a .289 .152 .049a .016a -.055a .558 .609
14. Collaboration .127 .007a .161 -.058a .117 .319 .127 .095a -.052a -.047a .640 .632 .772
15. Functions .417 -.161 .153 .048a .215 .017a .311 .267 .246 .225 .063a .064a .069a .127a
16. Ethics .372 -.089a .024a .025a .076a -.016a .318 .260 .174 .232 .097a .121a .051a .151 .724
Note: all of the coefficients, except those marked by “a”, are statistically significant at the .10, .05, or .01
levels.
The results of the multiple regression analysis are shown in Table 3. The model explains
about 48 percent of the variation in the dependent variable. Since tolerance values are all
greater than 0.1, there was no problem of multicollinearity. With the Dutbin-Watson value
at 1.929, near the criterion of 2, we could conclude that there were no correlations among
residuals.
As predicted, public servant’s propensity to trust (β=.457, p<.01), the assessment of both
citizens’ benevolence (β=.155, p<.05) and integrity (β=.197, p<.05), and the perception
of citizens’ trust in government functions (β=.184, p<.05) are positively associated with
high levels of public servants’ trust in citizens. Thus, hypotheses 1, 2b, 2c, and 4a are
supported in this study (see Table 3). The regression analysis also finds that engagement
in a “coordination” relationship (β=-.194, p<.05) is negatively related to trust in citizens,
in support of hypothesis 3b. Contrary to hypothesis 3a, engagement in a “command”
relationship (β=.155, p<.10) was positively related to public servants’ trust in citizens.
Among the control variables, only the years of work in central government is significantly
related to public servants’ trust in citizens. This shows that public officials who have
worked in central government for a shorter period are more likely to express higher levels
of trust in citizens.
Table 3. Regression Analysis Predicting Public Servants’ Trust in Citizens

Standardized
Regression Standard Error t Tolerance
Coefficient (B)
Individual Variables
Propensity to trust .457 .055 8.065*** .791
Ability -.032 .076 -.460 .541
Benevolence .155 .074 2.016** .432
Integrity .197 .080 2.337** .357
Command .155 .057 1.862* .366
Coordination -.194 .062 -2.365** .376
Cooperation .030 .064 .340 .337
Collaboration .083 .067 .894 .372
Functions .184 .081 2.284** .391
Ethics .081 .065 1.048 .429
Control Variables
Gender .028 .182 .509 .838
Age .129 .018 1.291 .255
Education -.006 .164 -.014 .825
Tenure -.197 .012 -2.302** .271
Citizen Contact -.006 .036 -.109 .802
R2 .517
Adj R2 .479
F 13.575***
Durbin-Watson 1.929
* Significant at p<.10; ** Significant at p<.05; *** Significant at p<.01
The results of multiple regression analysis show the relative weight of the influence of
independent variables. The influence is greater in terms of public servants’ individual trust
propensity, their perception of citizens’ integrity, their engagement in coordination relations
with citizens, their perception of citizens’ trust in government functions, their perception of
citizens’ benevolence, and their engagement in command relations with citizens.
DISCUSSION
This study finds that individual and social factors affect South Korean public servants’
trust in citizens. Among the individual factors, the propensity to trust and the perception of
citizens’ integrity have a strong positive effect on Korean public servants’ trust in citizens.
Among the social factors, their engagement in coordination relations with citizens and
their perception of citizens’ trust in government functions were both related to their trust in
citizens. The perception of citizens’ benevolence and engagement in command relations
with citizens have a similar weight of influence on trust in citizens. These results mirror
the trust study on factors affecting interpersonal trust, the attribute of interactions between
government and citizens based on Korean administrative culture, and public servants’
responsive attitude to citizens’ assessment of the government.
The most influential of all independent variables on public servants’ trust in citizens is
individual propensity to trust. Yang’s studies (2005, 2006) revealed that trust in citizens of
U.S. public servants was affected by their individual propensity to trust. Trust propensity
includes principles and values that a truster would consider desirable.5 Compared to other
variables, propensity to trust is less influenced by circumstantial conditions, making a
truster able to tolerate uncertain motives of a trustee.
Even after a truster has acquired concrete information that is necessary to the assessment
of the trustworthiness of a trustee, trust propensity continues to influence the level of trust.
Our study also reveals that the propensity to trust is an important variable influencing
the level of trust along with other variables of trustworthiness of a trustee. Considering
that the general desire to trust people is formed through the experience of diverse social
participation, the government should promote public servants’ participation in social
activities (Putnam, 1995; Yang, 2005). Social services and local community activities
would allow public servants to interact with diverse members of society. In the case of
South Korea, exclusive social networks such as school alumni or hometown groups tend to
expand the opportunities to participate in diverse social groups. It would therefore be useful
if associational groups were more vigorously formed inside government organizations.
Among the trustworthiness variables, the benevolence and integrity of citizens were
found to be significant factors influencing public servants’ trust in citizens. Aspects of a
trustee’s character such as benevolence and integrity influence the level of trust for different
reasons. In our case study, public servants’ perception of citizens as people of integrity was
shown to be the second most important factor influencing their trust in citizens. Integrity
becomes a rational reason to trust by providing predictability of a person’s response to
uncertain circumstances (Lind, 2001). On the other hand, benevolence influences the trust
level by evoking emotional affiliation to consider and support a trustee (Colquitt et al,
2007).
Our study shows that public servants’ perception of citizen benevolence and integrity
influences their trust more significantly than their perception of citizen ability. This
implies that public servants’ trust in citizens is primarily drawn from the trustworthiness
of citizens. When the integrity and benevolence of a trustee strongly influence a truster’s
trust, this dyadic relationship is either “deep dependence” or “shallow interdependence”
(Sheppeard and Sherman, 1998).6 Public servants’ trust in citizens belongs to “shallow
interdependence,” where public servants and citizens coordinate their behavior to achieve
common goals. In this case, a truster assumes that the risk of weak cooperation is high, so
that a trustee’s consistency and predictability become important in affecting a truster’s trust.
Consistency is generally classified as the same as integrity, while predictability is regarded
as being based on integrity. Therefore, the integrity of a trustee is also considered important
in affecting trust in the case of a “shallow interdependence” relationship. When government
sets up specific policy plans and seeks to legitimize them, it checks how citizens respond
by measuring public opinion (Walters et al., 2000; Wang, 2001). To achieve successful
policy implementation, public servants engage in cooperation with citizens, who serve as
both consumers of government services and partners to improve those services. While this
interdependency is desirable for successful policy outputs, public servants must contend
with coordination problems, such as ensuring citizen representativeness, financial support
for regular meetings with citizens, time loss, and possible conflicts (Koontz, 1999).
These coordination problems can be lessened when public servants have information and
experience revealing that citizens’ actions are consistent and predictable (Sheppeard and
Sherman, 1998). Accordingly, public servants are motivated to consciously engage citizens
in diverse participatory channels in order to test if citizens are trustworthy enough to build
cooperative relations in performing their tasks.
This study also reveals how public servants’ engagement with citizens in specific
forms, rather than simple contact, has a more meaningful influence upon their trust in
citizens. Interestingly, a hierarchical “command” interaction with citizens or government-
led coordination tends to influence public servants’ trust in citizens more than horizontal
interactions of cooperation or collaboration. This result seems to reflect the still
authoritarian administrative culture in South Korea. Accordingly, Korean public servants
are still more familiar with deciding and resolving social problems through a centralized
control process. With only a short history of decentralized administrative power, central
government officials are still more familiar with an authoritarian culture. Working in the
central government, their role tends to cause them to interact with experts or policy groups
more often than ordinary citizens.
In the public-private partnership interaction, public servants’ engagement in

“coordination” activities with citizens affected the level of trust in citizens more than did
“command” engagement. However, the relationship was negative. Namely, the more they
engaged in coordination activities with citizens, the more their trust in citizens decreased.
This reflects the public officials’ difficulty in coordinating differences in the context of
conflicts of opinion and interests. Given that public servants’ engagement in command
relations with citizens brought about greater trust in citizens, we can guess that they would
prefer citizens to comply with public policy while avoiding conflicts in the decision-making
process. This interpretation reminds us of the necessity of institutional back-up mechanisms
that can ease policy confrontation and conflict between public servants and citizens. This
kind of institutional design will be increasingly in need as more diverse social groups come
to participate in the government’s policy-making processes and so more cooperation is
required for discretion and compromise.
This study found that public servants’ interaction with citizens in a collaborative
relationship has no significant effect on trust in citizens. This result implies that public
servants may perceive the need to build trust in order to reduce antagonism among
actors as part of a consensus-oriented collaborative process. However, their willingness
to share responsibility and form interdependent links with citizens in order to achieve
possible outcomes does not necessarily involve trust in citizens. Namely, it is necessary to
systematically analyze the direct and indirect effects of trust in citizens with public servants’
commitment to the collaboration with citizens.
The results of this study show that public servants’ perception of citizens’ trust in
government functions affects their trust in citizens. On the other hand, their perception of
citizens’ trust in governmental ethics did not significantly influence their trust in citizens.
This result may reflect the fact that public servants are conscious of citizens’ judgment of
the government’s performance and capacity. According to most Korean studies, citizens’
trust in government increases significantly when the government is viewed to be able in
its functional areas of economy, social welfare, and security (Park and Bae, 2011; Y. Lee,
2008; W. Kim, 2011; J. Park, 1991; Kim and Lee, 2009). Since trust implies reciprocity,
public servants form a friendly attitude toward citizens when they think citizens’ view
government performance favorably. In contrast, public servants usually develop alienation,
fear, and cynicism when facing complaints from citizens or the media (King and Stivers,
1998). With a similar view, Yang’s study (2005) revealed that public servants’ perception of
government criticism negatively affected their trust in citizens.
Interestingly, among measures of trustworthiness, citizens’ benevolence and integrity
were more important than citizens’ ability in terms of increasing public servants’ trust
in citizens. These results reflect how public servants perceive interdependent roles in
their relations with citizens. While public servants consider government as a trustee that
produces and delivers quality services to citizens, they want citizens to agree to common
objectives and comply with government policies to achieve them.
Among control variables, public servants who have worked for a long time in Korean
central government are less likely to express trust in citizens. This result is similar to the
effects of the interactions such as command and coordination with citizens. The Korean
citizen-government relationship has involved the Confucian elements of respect for
authority and hierarchy. Therefore, the bureaucracy is strong, and public servants, who are
predominantly the elites of society, are considered wise and good decision-makers who
hold a long-term perspective (Im, 2003). In this regard, the longer public servants are in
government service, the more they are accustomed to the hierarchical administrative culture
and citizen-government relationship. Though top-down communication and authoritarian
management are influenced by administrative reform (e.g., NPM), the change in official
environment does not necessarily lead to a change in public servants’ perception of and
behavior toward citizens. To understand the mutual perceptions between government and
citizens, it is helpful to consider the basis of the Korean administrative culture and the
legacy of bureaucracy-led economic development.
CONCLUSION
In general, trust is accounted for by reducing the transaction costs involved in mutual
distrust and monitoring. The “benign” effect of trust occurs between government and
civil society and therefore contributes to cooperation. However, most studies of trust have
focused on citizens’ trust in government, which enhances the policy compliance of citizens
and induces continuous and pragmatic responses to complex problems. This unilateral
direction of trust shows the limits in discussing the development of government-citizen
collaboration. Genuine collaborative governance would not be possible without the trust of
the government in the citizens it serves. This direction of trust has not been properly studied
so far. In particular, understanding the factors that influence the trust of public servants in
citizens is important in the study of collaborative governance.
Despite theoretical propositions, few empirical investigations of Korean public servants’
trust in citizens have been conducted. This study responds to this need by measuring public
servants’ level of trust in citizens and analyzing factors affecting that trust. The findings
of this study are particularly useful to compare Korean and U.S. public servants. When
comparing to American public servants in Yang’s study (2005), we find some similarities
and differences in the trust level of Korean public servants and the factors affecting their
trust in citizens. First of all, the level of public servants’ perceived trust in citizens in both
countries is modest. In other words, public servants of both Korea and America tend to have
a neutral view of citizens and tend to avoid involving their own feelings, emotions, and
ethics in making administrative decisions. Another similar finding is that public servants’
propensity to trust is significantly associated with their trust in citizens in Korea and the
United States.
Theoretically, this article addresses how individual propensity to trust, trustworthiness,

experiences of interaction, and public servants’ perception of citizens’ trust or distrust in
government affect public servants’ trust in citizens. Even though some results are similar
to those of Yang’s study (2005), this study suggests that not only individual factors but also
societal factors, including situational variables such as the type of interaction with citizens,
should be taken into account in order to understand public servants’ trust in citizens. The
most interesting finding of this study relates to the impact of public servants’ engagement in
a public-private partnership on their trust in citizens. While there is a negative relationship
between the extent of “coordination” engagement and the level of trust in citizens, we
found a positive relationship between the extent of “command” engagement and the level
of trust in citizens. This distinctive feature that public officials in a commanding position
trust citizens more may reflect the Confucian culture, where a responsible official with
power is more responsive to people’s needs. If so, the popular thesis that collaborative
governance occurs in the horizontal public-private partnership developed from the studies
of western societies needs to be revised in the case of East Asian countries.
This study has demonstrated that the relative weight of factors affecting public servants’
trust in citizens is ranked as follows: their individual propensity to trust, their perception of
citizens’ integrity, their engagement in coordination relations with citizens, their perception
of citizens’ trust in government functions, their perception of citizens’ benevolence, and
their engagement in command relations with citizens. These results have the following
implications for an increase in public servants’ trust in citizens. The Korean government
should encourage citizens to respond positively to the citizens’ evaluation of their
performance. Specifically, integrating such a response into the evaluation system of public
officials can be considered as an effective means. The Korean government needs to provide
public officials with more training opportunities to ensure more horizontal interaction with
citizens and to generate more a positive attitude toward citizens’ involvement in policy
processes or government programs. As mentioned above, public officials tend to prefer
centralized control in order to solve problems, and therefore underestimate the effectiveness
of citizen participation. To facilitate collaboration with citizens, it is crucial for the
government to make management policies that can bring about a change in public servants’
perception of citizens as partners.
Despite this contribution, our study has some limitations. First, because this study
was limited to cross-sectional research as a result of the data characteristics (e.g., data of
surveyed perceptions), longitudinal research on Korean public servants’ trust in citizens
should be conducted to find obvious causal inferences and to develop more strategic
collaborative management guidelines for interaction between government and citizens.
Second, the measures used here are perceptual rather than objective; a more complete
analysis would require additional data on citizens’ trust in government, which may provide
many implications with different effects on trust in citizens. Finally, the findings of this
study need to be checked with other similar studies based on larger samples. Comparison
between central and local government officials and with other East Asian countries would
be extremely helpful.
NOTES
* This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the
Korean Government (NRF-2010-330-B00254)
1. Yang (2005: 276) identified factors at individual, organizational, and social levels based on the
analogous literature and the theoretical interest of his theoretical interest. First, at individual
level, he analyzed the effects of individual propensity to trust, prior experience, and self-
efficacy on public servants’ trust in citizens. Next, factors at the organizational level refer
to procedural, market, or network orientation of bureaucracy, while organizational factor
comprises criticism of the government, defined as citizens’ distrust in government.
2. Vigoda (2002) categorized the interactions between public administration and citizens into five
types: coerciveness, which is the interaction between public administration as rulers and citizens
as subjects; delegation, which is the interaction between public administration as trustees and
citizens as voters; responsiveness, which is the interaction between public administration as
managers and citizens as clients or customers; collaboration, which is the interaction between
public administration as partner and citizens as partners; citizenry coerciveness, which is the
interaction between public administration as subjects and citizens as owners.
3. In support of the validity of the measures used, confirmatory factor analysis testing the
measurement model provided a good fit to the data (see appendices B and C), suggesting that
the items converged on their respective latent variables and that each measure represented a
distinct latent variable. All of the scale items were found to have statistically significant factor
loadings (p<.01) for their respective latent construct. Having obtained the factor structure,
we then determined the Cronbach’s alphas for the reliability of each scale. In the hierarchical
regression analysis, we used the factor scores that indicate the average of the items based on the
result of confirmatory factor analysis.
4. “Values are general standards or principles that are considered intrinsically desirable ends,
such as loyalty, helpfulness, fairness, predictability, reliability, honesty, responsibility, integrity,
competence, consistency, and openness. That contributes to the generalized experience of trust
and can even create a propensity to trust” (Jones and Geroge, 1998: 532).
5. Sheppeard and Sherman (1998: 426–427) explained that trustworthiness means different
things, depending upon the nature of the risk being assumed in the relationship. Therefore,
trustworthiness was categorized according to form of dependence: trustworthiness in
shallow dependence comprises discretion, reliability, or competence; trustworthiness in deep
dependence involves integrity, concern, or benevolence; shallow interdependence is associated
with trustworthiness factors such as predictability or consistency; deep interdependence
requires trustworthiness involving foresight, intuition, or empathy.
6. Kim et al. (2009) analyzed a data set drawn from surveys of 442 South Korean citizens in
2004. They found that the level of citizen trust in government was higher with the order of trust
in public ethics, trust in management capacity, trust in administrative performance, and trust in
political capacity.
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Sook Jong Lee is a professor in the Department of Public Administration and Graduate
School of Governance at Sungkyunkwan University. She earned her PhD in sociology at
Harvard University. Her primary research interests include democracy and civil society,
the political economy of Korea and Japan, and political sociology. Her work has appeared
in Journal of Contemporary Asia, Pacific Focus, Korea Observer, Asian Perspective, and
International Studies Review. E-mail: skjlee@skku.edu
Hi Jeong Yu is a researcher in the Institute of Governance & Policy Evaluation at

Sungkyunkwan University. She earned her PhD in public administration at Sungkyunkwan
University in Korea. Her research interests focus on public management, social capital,
trust, and participation. She has published her work in public administration and public
policy journals, including Journal of Korean Political Science Review, Korean Policy
Studies Review, and The Korea Local Administration Review. E-mail: hjyu0221@gmail.
com
Received: March 25, 2013

Revised: June 10, 2013
Accepted: June 24, 2013
Appendix A. Summary of Variables
Public Servants’ Trust in Citizens

· How much do you trust in citizens?
Propensity to Trust (General Social Survey; World Value Survey)
· Would you say that most people can be trusted?
· Do you think most people would try to treat me fairly?
· Would you say that most people try to be helpful?
Trustworthiness (Mayer et al., 1995; Colquitt et al., 2007)

· Ability (Cronbach’s alpha=.60, factor loadings: .34–.81): Citizens have strong political influence.
Citizens have a high level of knowledge. Citizens are rational.
· Benevolence (Cronbach’s alpha=.76, factor loadings: .50–.86): Citizens try to help public servants.
Citizens have a strong sense of responsibility. Citizens care for each other.
· Integrity (Cronbach’s alpha=.85, factor loadings: .80–.83): Citizens are faithful. Citizens are fair.
Citizens are honest.
Interactions with Citizens (Shergold, 2008; Ansell, 2008)
· How frequently do you contact with citizens?
· How frequently do you engage in command relations with citizens?
∙ How frequently do you engage in coordination relations with citizens?
∙ How frequently do you engage in cooperation relations to share ideas and resources with citizens?
∙ How frequently do you engage in collaboration relations to share responsibility in decision making
with citizens?
Perceptions of Citizens’ Trust in Government (Hetherington, 1998; Kim et al, 2009)
· Functional dimension (Cronbach’s alpha=.89, factor loadings: .70–.92): How much do citizens
trust their government efficiency? How much do citizens trust their government effectiveness? How
much do citizens trust their government consistency? How much do citizens trust their government
expertise? How much do citizens trust their government responsiveness?
∙ Ethical dimension (Cronbach’s alpha=.90, factor loadings: .83–.92): How much do citizens trust
their government justice? How much do citizens trust their government transparency? How much do
citizens trust their government accountability?
Appendix B. Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Trustworthiness
Scale Items Standardized regression weights

Ability Benevolence Integrity
Citizens have strong political influence. .326
Citizens have a high level of knowledge. .538
Citizens are rational. .832
Citizens try to help public servants. .488
Citizens have a strong sense of responsibility. .778
Citizens care for each other. .857

Citizens are faithful. .795
Citizens are fair. .814
Citizens are honest. .832
Goodness of fit: Chi-Square = 153.654; df = 24; p< .01; Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .90; Normal Fit
Index (NFI) = .87; Incremental Fit Index (IFI) = 0.90
Appendix C. Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Perceptions of Citizens’ Trust in

Government
Standardized regression weights

Scale Items Functions Ethics
Performance Competency
How much do citizens trust their government efficiency? .888
How much do citizens trust their government effectiveness? .921
How much do citizens trust their government consistency? .701
How much do citizens trust their government expertise? .786
How much do citizens trust their government responsiveness? .794
How much do citizens trust their government justice? .826
How much do citizens trust their government transparency? .843
How much citizens trust their government accountability? .923
Goodness of fit: Chi-Square = 43.664; df = 17; p< .01; Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .98; Normal Fit Index
(NFI) = .97; Incremental Fit Index (IFI) = 0.98

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This article was downloaded by: [University of Otago]

On: 30 December 2014, At: 15:27

International Review of Public

Factors Affecting Public Servants’

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/12294659.2013.10805265

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

FACTORS AFFECTING PUBLIC SERVANTS’

SOOK JONG LEE

Most studies of governance have emphasized that trust in government

Key words: public servants’ trust in citizens, propensity to trust,

In responding to market or state failure, governance has been regarded as an alternative

often challenged by their lack of representativeness (Jessop, 2000). Participants seeking

SOUTH KOREAN BUREAUCRACY AND CITIZENS

administration in a relatively short period.

administration is to succeed, it is very important to understand the conditions under which

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESES

Factors Affecting Trust in Citizens

Hypothesis 1: Public servants’ propensity to trust positively affects trust in citizens.

Trustworthiness. The characteristics and actions of a trustee lead a person to be more or

Benevolence is defined as “the extent to which a trustee is believed to want to do good

Hypothesis 2: Trustworthiness will positively affect public servants’ trust in citizens.

relationship, the more they will trust citizens.

Perceptions of Citizens’ Trust in Government. Considering that mutual trust is

Hypothesis 4: Public servants’ perception of citizen trust in government will positively

Measurement and Instruments

A total of 28 questions were asked to measure both dependent and independent

Table 1. Descriptive Statistics for Variables

1–3 times 1–3 times 1–3 times

Factors Affecting Public Servants’ Trust in Citizens

Table 2. Correlations of Variables

Table 3. Regression Analysis Predicting Public Servants’ Trust in Citizens

In the public-private partnership interaction, public servants’ engagement in

Theoretically, this article addresses how individual propensity to trust, trustworthiness,

Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

edited by Stocker, G. New York: Macmillan Press.

Enduring Questions. Annual Review of Psychology 50: 569–598.

The Korea Local Administration Review 13(2): 145–168.

Different All: A Cross-Discipline View of Trust. Academy of Management Review

Management Review 24(4): 322–336.

Hi Jeong Yu is a researcher in the Institute of Governance & Policy Evaluation at

Received: March 25, 2013

Appendix A. Summary of Variables

Public Servants’ Trust in Citizens

Trustworthiness (Mayer et al., 1995; Colquitt et al., 2007)

Appendix B. Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Trustworthiness

Scale Items Standardized regression weights

Citizens care for each other. .857

Appendix C. Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Perceptions of Citizens’ Trust in

Standardized regression weights

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Key words: public servants’ trust in citizens, propensity to trust,

Hypothesis 4: Public servants’ perception of citizen trust in government will positively