Government Capability, Benevolence, and Public Trust in Cyber Risk Governance: Evidence from a Survey Experiment on Telecom Fraud in China

Abstract

This study examines how government capability and benevolence shape public trust and whether risk intensity changes the relative salience of these evaluations. A 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects survey experiment was conducted with 683 participants. Government capability and benevolence were manipulated as high or low, and the risk scenario was varied between low-risk and high-risk conditions. Government trust was measured as the change from pre-test to post-test. Results show that government capability had a stronger effect on trust than government benevolence. The two dimensions also worked in combination: the high-capability/high-benevolence condition showed the only positive mean change in trust, while weakness in either dimension reduced trust. High-risk scenarios attenuated the trust advantage of capability overall, but follow-up analyses showed that this attenuation was concentrated when government benevolence was low. The findings contribute to public administration research by showing how citizens evaluate government trustworthiness in cyber risk governance and by highlighting the importance of administrative capacity, the limits of benevolence without delivery capacity, and the need for expectation management in risk communication.