E-government service use and public trust in government: Evidence from Central Asia and the South Caucasus

This study examines the relationship between e-government service use and government trust in seven countries across Central Asia and the South Caucasus. We use Life in Transition Survey IV data from 6,501 respondents collected in 2022–2023. E-government use combines five online public-service activities, while government trust combines trust in the cabinet of ministers, regional government and local government. Survey-weighted two-stage least squares models use transactional Internet use as an instrument and include individual controls, communicative Internet use and country fixed effects, with standard errors clustered by primary sampling unit. Under the instrument assumptions, a one-unit increase in the standardized e-government score is associated with 0.109 standard deviations higher trust in the baseline model and 0.138 after adding digital skills and mobile Internet use. Both estimates are significant at the 5% level. A supplementary instrumental variable structural equation model also finds a positive relationship when trust is treated as a latent variable. No country estimate is significant after correction for multiple testing. The pooled estimate loses significance at the 10% level when either Armenia or Uzbekistan is excluded and weakens when the instrument is allowed a positive direct relationship with trust. The study provides comparative evidence linking online public-service use to government trust, while showing that the pooled finding is sensitive to country composition and instrument validity.