Consumers of online services rely on judgments of trust about the online vendor and the transaction channel (e.g. the Internet) when engaging in transactions involving disclosure of personal information. While the importance of trust for commercial transactions online is well established, less is known about factors that influence trust in relation to electronic government services. Moreover, perceptions of trust depend heavily on the cultural context and thus can vary across countries. This study draws on Sociological and e-Commerce theories to investigate differences in trust and consumption of public services by citizens across two contrasting cultural settings: Mexico and the United States. A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods was used to explore differences across countries in terms of overall level of trust in e-government and its relationship with service utilization.Findings provide important insights for understanding the relationship between trust and e-government utilization. Across the two countries, three distinct components of trust were identified: (1) government's competence and benevolence, (2) government's handling of transactional data, and (3) perceptions about the reliability and security of the online service delivery medium. Overall, the U.S. sample shows a higher level of trust and service utilization compared to the Mexico sample. The two countries differ particularly in the impact of perceptions of benevolence and competence on e-government service utilization. In the U.S., improving perception on competence and benevolence has a higher effect on service utilization compared to Mexico. Similarly, increased trust in the handling of data increases utilization of e-government services only in the U.S. On the other hand, increased trust in the medium of delivery impacts service utilization in both cultures. Potential implications of the findings for future research on cross-cultural trust and public policy are discussed.Focus groups were first used to develop a survey inquiring about trust and online service utilization. In the second part of the study, the survey was used to collect information about perceptions of trust in four e-government services. Factor analysis was used to verify that the instrument yields similar measures of trust in both countries with those measures a multi-group path analysis was used to assess the associations and differences between trust and e-government service utilization.
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