Essays on Transparency and Trust in Government

Trust in government is fundamental to the functioning of democratic societies, shaping policy compliance, economic outcomes, and institutional health. One of the factors regarded as a main driver of trust is public transparency. This dissertation investigates the relationship between government transparency and citizen trust through three interconnected studies, addressing gaps and methodological challenges in the literature. The first study is a systematic literature review of existing research on the influence of transparency on trust in government, highlighting variation in findings based on methodological approaches. Observational studies often report a positive relationship; however, these results are frequently affected by common source bias, where the same data sources are used to measure both variables. Experimental studies, in contrast, yield mixed results and reveal a gap in the literature: a lack of focus on the act of government disclosure itself, rather than how citizens process disclosed information. The second study addresses this gap using a factorial survey experiment to examine how specific attributes of the act of government disclosure—such as the type of information, organizational context, and perceived motives for disclosure—shape citizen trust. This approach provides insights into the conditions under which transparency fosters or erodes trust, offering guidance for designing more effective information disclosure practices. The third study explores the use of machine learning techniques to analyze Twitter (X) data as a means of measuring public trust in U.S. government entities, including Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Executive Branch. While correlations between social media-derived indicators and traditional survey measures are modest, this method shows potential for capturing trust dynamics within specific demographic groups. It also highlights the limitations of social media data, emphasizing the need for further refinement to complement traditional survey methods and broaden their applicability. Through these three studies, this dissertation contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between transparency and trust. The findings offer insights for scholars examining this relationship and for practitioners aiming to strengthen public trust in governance through evidence-based information disclosure strategies.