Effects of competence- and integrity-based trust on public acceptability of renewable energy projects in China and the Netherlands

The Road toward Smart Cities: A Study of Citizens’ Acceptance of Mobile Applications for City Services

“…The influence of this factor was not as strong as that of performance and effort expectations, but the findings suggest this component of trust might be an important consideration for cities designing or promoting similar apps. Of note, however, previous studies have found the integrity component of trust to weigh more heavily in consumers' decisions regarding some technologies [58]. Such a relationship is consistent with previous research [21] that found that citizens who are integrated into public administration processes of their municipalities have an increased intention to use city portals.…”

“…Because city apps are developed and run by city governments, trust in government should play an important role in citizens' expectations of the apps. Indeed, trust has been shown to influence the adoption of website-based and m-government services [8,56,57] and to be correlated with support for new energy technology [58], while citizens' lack of trust in their government has been found to negatively affect citizens' intentions to use e-government services [59]. Similarly, trust in the vendor of a technology (perceived general trustworthiness and trust in the provider's ability to offer adequate services) has been found to enhance the adoption of e-commerce and m-government services [60,61].…”

“…Similarly, trust in the vendor of a technology (perceived general trustworthiness and trust in the provider's ability to offer adequate services) has been found to enhance the adoption of e-commerce and m-government services [60,61]. Two components of trust have been identified in the field of social cognition and in recent work that examines trust in organizations (agents) that produce and manage new energy-related technologies [58]. The first component is competence, the extent to which citizens evaluate the responsible agent as possessing sufficient knowledge and expertise to manage the project or technology; the second is integrity, the extent to which an agent is judged as honest, transparent, and possessing good intentions [58].…”

“…Two components of trust have been identified in the field of social cognition and in recent work that examines trust in organizations (agents) that produce and manage new energy-related technologies [58]. The first component is competence, the extent to which citizens evaluate the responsible agent as possessing sufficient knowledge and expertise to manage the project or technology; the second is integrity, the extent to which an agent is judged as honest, transparent, and possessing good intentions [58]. Accordingly, we investigated the role of both of these trust factors in predicting citizens' intentions to use a city app.…”

“…Trust in city government. As described in the literature review, studies have recently identified two components of trust [58]: Competence, the extent to which citizens evaluate the responsible agent as possessing sufficient knowledge and expertise to manage the project or technology, and integrity, the extent to which an agent is judged as honest, transparent, and possessing good intentions. Based on this conceptualization and previous items measuring trust [60,61], we measured competence by asking participants "How much do you trust your city government to effectively run and manage a city management app like DigiTally?"…”