Trust as a leveraging factor for civic engagement

This paper aims to investigate trust as a critical factor that increases e-government information and services usage that lead to civic engagement in a developing country. The study developed a theoretical framework that hypothesises several relationships between the trust in government, trust in technology, perceived usefulness, trust in e-government, the intention to use e-government and civic engagement. More than 500 individuals are eligible to use e-government services in Kuwait participated in the survey. The results supported the majority of the relationships to confirm the role of trust in the use of e-government services. The study provides theoretical contributions as well as practical implications for researchers and practitioners working on the improvement of e-government projects to increase their adoption and use.