02007pab a2200181 454500 180718b2012 xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d Grimmelikhuijsen, Stephan Linking transparency knowledge and citizen trust in government: An experiment 2012 p.50-73. Mar Declining citizen trust in government is an important driver for NPM-style reforms. Increasing people's knowledge by providing factual knowledge about government performance outcomes is seen as an important way of increasing citizen trust in government. Does this promise hold or is knowledge about performance outcomes not that important? Two rivalling hypotheses are being investigated. One proposition postulates a link between knowledge and trust, whereas the alternative hypothesis borrows from social-psychological research arguing that subconscious and affective cues are more important. In order to investigate this question, this article presents the results of an experiment (N = 658) investigating the effect of performance outcome transparency on citizen trust in a specific government organization. Four groups visited different websites with varying degrees of transparency and performance outcome. The results demonstrate that the link between transparency and trust in a government organization is determined by a mix of knowledge and feelings. Further, the overall effect of transparency is limited. Pre-existing and fundamental ideas about what government does and whether it is benign or not are far more determining than a single experience with a government organization. This article concludes that knowledge about performance outcomes is only part of the link between transparency and trust, and that more realistic views about transparency's effects should be developed. - Reproduced. Accountability Administrative reform International Review of Administrative Sciences N 95835 95835 95835 0 0 0 0 IIPA IIPA 2018-07-19 Volume no: 78, Issue no: 1 AR96295 2018-07-19 2018-07-19 AR