Transparency of public decision-making: towards trust in local goverment?

Abstract

Online minutes of local councils offer the opportunity to look behind the scenes of local government decision-making. Will this transparency, as promised, lead to higher levels of trust? This issue was investigated by conducting an experiment comparing participants who did not access the available information, people who were only allowed restricted information about the minutes, and those who were shown the full minutes of the local council. Results indicated that people exposed to more information were significantly more negative regarding perceived competence of the council compared to those who did not access the available information. Additionally, participants who received only restricted information about the minutes thought the council was less honest compared to those who did not read them. The relationship between transparency and trust is influenced partly by the perceived credibility of the message on the website. Also, knowledge about the decision-making process appears to shift judgment criteria. People well informed about the process are inclined to base their judgment of perceived competence on this knowledge and less on message credibility. A theoretical explanation for the negative effect of transparency of public decision-making is sought in the expectations of the public versus the reality. A lower perceived competence by those who had access to full information might be explained by a gap between public expectations of rational decision-making and the reality of the chaos involved in public decision-making exposed through transparency.