Trust in e-participation: an empirical research on the influencing factors

E-participation provides a means to involve citizens in e-government decision-making. The ease of access to e-participation processes has raised the issue of trustworthiness of both the institutions promoting processes and the citizens participating in these processes. While trust in ICT applications, such as e-commerce and social media networks, has been widely studied, trust in e-participation has not been studied in depth. Since it is necessary to create a trusted environment so that citizens choose to participate in e-participation processes, this paper analyzes the factors that directly influence trust in e-participation initiatives through an empirical research. The study is performed on the citizens of Valencia Capital city and analyzes predominantly the factors that influence the procedure, the technology, and the perceived risk and/or the benefits of the electronic participation. The obtained results are exposed through models created and synthesized through the SmartPLS tool.