The effect of transparency in trust in government: a cross-national comparative experiment.

Abstract

Transparency is considered a key value for trustworthy governments. However, the effect of transparency on citizens’ trust across different national cultures is overlooked in current research. This article compares the effect of transparency on trust in government between the Netherlands and South Korea. The effect is investigated by two similar series of three experiments. We hypothesize that the effect of transparency differs, because both countries have different cultural values regarding power distance and short and long-term orientation. Results reveal similar patterns in both countries: transparency has a subdued and sometimes negative effect on trust in government. However, the negative effect in South Korea is much stronger. This implies a subdued and negative effect of transparency on trust in the short term in both countries. Nevertheless, the difference in the magnitude of transparency’s effect suggests that national cultural values play a significant role in how people perceive and appreciate government transparency.