Study On The Antecedents Of Social Trust In Public E-Information Service

Internet has become the main access to information. While public information service is always the primary application citizens search for online, regardless of how the Internet service evolves. Publice e-information serviceis not only essential to economic and social development, but also an important part of promoting public's right to know and democratic practice. Both the important role explored theoretically, and the practical problems encountered in the development process, highlight the value and significance of studying the antecedents of social trust in public e-information service. In this dissertation, the author extracts the antecedents of social trust in public e-information service based on literature research and dimension design, and builds the conceptual model of antecedents; then, verifies the model through questionnaire survey, along with structural equation model, and compares the differences among samples with various individual characteristics in social trust and its antecedents by other statistical methods; to sum up, identifies the focus to improve the social trust in public e-information service and puts forword corresponding strategies.The main body of the dissertation consists of 7 chapters:Chapter 1 provides a comprehensive overview of related study on social trust in public e-information service both in China and at abroad, finding that they have the similar research paradigm. Many studies treat trust as a latent variable or intermediate variable which focus the role of trust in public e-service, while studies regarding trust as a dependent variable to explore the influence of other factors on it is relatively few. Furthermore, current studies usually consider government as the primary provider, which ignore other service proveiders' role in the public e-information service to some extent.Chapter 2 explores social trust in public e-information service theoretically. It includes 3 parts:first, addresses the important role of social trust in realizing service goal, creating social value, and promoting public participation during the service process; then introduces the theoretical basis of the dissertation, which are stakeholder theory, social influence theory, and elaboration likelihood model; finally, identifies the stakeholders of public e-information service and the trust concerns of the public about various stakeholders.Chapter 3 assesses the development of social trust in public e-information service. In practice, the trust level of online information service, public confidence in public information service institutions, and social need of credible public e-information service, all challenge the development of social trust in public e-information service.Chapter 4 extracts the antecedents of social trust in public e-information service. Based on extensive literature research in China and at abroad, the author summarizes the anecedents of social trust in e-government, e-commerce and general online information service, and extracts antecedents of social trust in public e-information service from recognitive, emotional and institutional dimensions, which are service quality, trust of supplier, trust of partner, trust of distributor, social influence, structural assurance, and user expertise.Chapter 5 builds the conceptual model of antecedents of social trust in public e-information service based on the elaboration likelihood model, and verifies the model through questionnaire survey. The results show that service quality affect social trust in public e-information service via central route, while trust of supplier, trust of partner and trust of distributor affect social trust in public e-information service via peripheral route as hpothesized. Meanwhile, they are almost influenced by social influence and structural assurance. In addition, user expertise moderates the the effect of service quality and trust of partner on social trust in public e-information service. The author further compares the sample differences on social trust and its antecedents according to gender, occupation, time on internet, experience, preference and intention.Chapter 6 identifies the focus to improve the social trust in public e-information service and puts forword corresponding strategies based on the conceptual model. For central route, the author suggests improve the quality of service provision, cooperation, and distribution channel respectively; for peripheral route, emotional recognition between public sectors and the public should be built, which can form strong cohesion; for external variables, the author suggests to carry out social promotion and system assurance strategies, strengthening the external influence on potential users; and for moderator, it's necessary to conduct user segmentation and provide information literacy education accordingly, to improve user ability to judge and utilize public e-information service.Chapter 7 is the conclusion and further research. On the basis of limitation, the author puts forward the prospects for the next step study.