Despite the importance of citizens’ trust toward the successful adoption of e-government, the majority of the extant research focuses only on two dimensions to investigate the role of citizens’ trust in e-government which are, trust in technology and trust in government. Hence, there is an absence of research into the multi-dimensional nature of trust and in particular how demographic aspects such as citizens’ personality, culture, gender, experience, education level, beliefs and value systems influence citizens’ trust in e-government. This research particularly aims to investigate and analyse the critical factors influencing citizens' trust in e-government from different aspects including: technology, government agency, risk and citizens' perspective. To achieve this aim, this research undertook a comprehensive review of the e-government and trust literatures, followed by a systematic review of relevant academic articles to identify the factors influencing trust in e-government. The existing literature considered technical factors, government agencies, risk and citizens' aspects. Thereby, a conceptual framework was developed by extending the updated DeLone and McLean’ IS Success Model. To validate the framework, empirical research was preformed, followed by the distribution of a questionnaire to participants who have a past experience in using e-government services, within three ministries in Saudi Arabia. Of 1076 completed survey responses received, 912 were considered valid to use in this study. This study has applied structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to test the proposed research framework using SmartPLS 3.0. The final developed framework was then refined and presented along with the findings regarding the significant factors influencing citizens’ trust in e-government. The findings of study revealed that while technical factors and disposition to trust have a positive influence on trust in e-government, factors related to government agencies and risk have negative impacts on citizens' trust. With regard to the citizens' aspects, the findings reveal that the female respondents demonstrate a more positive evaluation of online services as compared to the male respondents, with the female group reporting more significant and positive influences of the technical aspects on trust in e-government as compared to the male group. Interestingly, this study found that old people display greater trust in e-government as compared to levels of trust reported by younger people. The findings also highlight that internet experience has a positive influence on citizens' trust, as increased levels of Internet experience increased the level of trust in e-government. Finally, the study found non-significant support of the influence of education level in terms of trust in e-government. Lastly, the strategies that governments use to build and develop citizens' trust were identified based on the findings of the study. The originality of this study is that it tries to provide new insights on the subject of citizens’ trust in e-government in Saudi Arabia, as limited studies investigate and analyse how citizens’ differences in gender, age, education level and internet experience can influence their trust in e-government. This study attempts to provide a validated conceptual framework that integrates different antecedents of trust in e-government. Also, the impact of additional factors such as citizens’ satisfaction, intention to continue use e-government and the moderating effect of different demographic factors (gender, age, education and internet experience) are considered in this research, complementing and enhancing the existing literature on trust in e-government. Also, this research offers several implications to practitioners (decision maker) and stakeholders who are involved in e-government initiatives by providing new insights into e-government adoption from a citizens’ perspective.

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In the past few years, e-government has been a topic of much interest among those excited about the advent of Web technologies. Due to the growing demand for effective communication to facilitate real-time interaction between users and e-government applications, many governments are considering installing new tools by e-government portals to mitigate the problems associated with user – interface communication. Therefore, this study is to indicate the use of multimodal metaphors such as audio-visual avatars in e-government interfaces; to increase the user performance of communications and to reduce information overload and lack of trust that is common with many e-government interfaces. However, only a minority of empirical studies has been focused on assessing the role of audio-visual metaphors in e-government. Therefore, the subject of this thesis’ investigation was the use of novel combinations of multimodal metaphors in the presentation of messaging content to produce an evaluation of these combinations’ effects on the users’ communication performance as well as the usability of e-government interfaces and perception of trust. The thesis outlines research comprising three experimental phases. An initial experiment was to explore and compare the usability of text in the presentation of the messaging content versus recorded speech and text with graphic metaphors. The second experimental was to investigate two different styles of incorporating initial avatars versus the auditory channel. The third experiment examined a novel approach around the use of speaking avatars with human-like facial expressions, obverse speaking avatars full body gestures during the presentation of the messaging content to compare the usability and communication performance as well as the perception of trust. The achieved results demonstrated the usefulness of the tested metaphors to enhance e-government usability, improve the performance of communication and increase users’ trust. A set of empirically derived ground-breaking guidelines for the design and use of these metaphors to generate more usable e-government interfaces was the overall provision of the results.

Referendums are enigmatic in their sense as consolidating— or erosive tools of representative democracy; nonetheless, an upswing in the referenda from below was recently highlighted in the literature. Thus, how local referendums from below are mobilized and whether they affect trust in local government is a significant question to be answered, which mandates bridging social movements to tools of deliberative democracy. Similarly, little is known about urban social movements and local patriotism as tenon and its mortise in a sub-national referendum. Therefore, this paper set sail from the role of local patriotism within collective action and aimed at exploring how locals are mobilized to petition a local referendum regarding the liquidation of a cityscape. Within an exploratory holistic single-case study design, I used QCA to analyse the data gathered through semi-structured interviews with members of The People’s Initiative for the Airport Future and various peculiar secondary data. The evidence was compelling in depicting the respondents’ solid spatial belonging— and an unmistakable altruistic stance towards Västerås manifested through political participation. Along with other conclusions, the evidence advocated a persuasive presence of local patriotism, a tendency to resort to unconventional political participation, and a fragmented trust in local government among the respondents.