Citizens' trust in government as a function of good governance and government agency's provision of quality information on social media during COVID-19

Abstract

Evidence from literature reveals that good governance practices influence citizens' attitudes and behaviours towards the government. Therefore, grounded on the good governance theory, the current study aimed to empirically examine how good governance practices promote public trust with the underlying mechanism of perceived government response on COVID-19 (PGRC) and moderating role of government agency's provision of quality information on social media (GQS). The data was collected from 491 followers of the Facebook account, Instagram, and Twitter pages of a government news agency, i.e., Associated Press of Pakistan and were analyzed using measurement and structural model by employing SmartPls 3.3.0. The results revealed a direct and indirect association of good governance practices with the public's trust in government via PGRC as mediator. Likewise, results showed that GQS interacts with PGRC and augments public trust in government. This study tried to contribute to the body of knowledge while addressing the gap related to the dearth of literature regarding government use of ICT during the COVID-19 pandemic to harvest benefits from social media while communicating with citizens on a larger scale. Moreover, the current study offers valuable practical and strategical recommendations to agencies and policymakers.