Public Service Motivation and Trust in Government: An Examination Across the Federal, State, and Local Levels in the United States

• Published date: 01 February 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740231200449
• Author: Colt Jensen,Jaclyn Piatak
• Date: 01 February 2024

Public Service Motivation and Trust in

Government: An Examination Across the

Federal, State, and Local Levels in the

United States

Colt Jensen

1

and Jaclyn Piatak

2

Abstract

In the United States, trust in government across the federal, state, and local levels has been on the decline for decades. With

increasing polarization and politicization, the work of public administratorsis frequently made more diff‌icult by challenges that

stem from low levels of public trust—responding to these challenges as well as recent calls that encourage public administra-

tors to regain the trust of the public they serve. Could public service motivation (PSM) promote trust in government? We

examine the association between PSM and trust in government across the federal, state, and local levels of government in

the United States. We f‌ind that the association between PSM and governmental trust varies by level of government. At

the state and local levels, PSM is positively associated with trust in government. However, we f‌ind no signif‌icant relationship

between PSM and trust at the federal level. Thus, there exists the potential for state and local administrators to use PSM to

build trust in the government and to facilitate improved policy implementation. Our f‌indings also provide insight into how key

predictors of public trust in government vary at the federal, state, and local levels of the U.S. government.

Keywords

trust in government, public service motivation, federalism, state government, local government

Trust in government acts as the foundation of its institutional

legitimacy (Chanley et al., 2000; Marien & Hooghe, 2011;

OECD, 2017). Public trust enables governments to function

without a costly and dangerous overreliance on coercion or

excessive appeals to self-interest (Hough et al., 2010; Kim,

2005; Sobel et al., 2018). However, trust in government in

the United States has been on the decline in recent decades

across levels of government, especially at the federal level

(Cole & Kincaid, 2000; Cooper et al., 2008). Scholars

argue that declines in conf‌idence in the federal government

compared to the state and local government contributed to

the devolution of public services and responsibilities to lower

levels of government in our federalist system (Jennings et al.,

1998; Hetherington & Nugent, 2001). Research highlights the

vital role of trust in government from support for government

involvement (Brooks & Cheng, 2001; Kim, 2005) to deter-

mining preferences for which level of government should

be responsible for different policy areas (Leland et al.,

2021). However, trust in government also corresponds to

public support.

Recently, implementation diff‌iculties resulting from low

levels of trust in government were evident during the

COVID-19 pandemic (Deslatte, 2020). For example, there

is a strong negative correlation between vaccine uptake and

one’s trust in government which has frustrated the rollout

of various COVID-19-specif‌ic vaccines (Miyachi et al.,

2020; Wynen et al., 2022). The diff‌iculties with policy imple-

mentation due to low trust in government during the corona-

virus pandemic spurred calls for public administrators to

“regain the people’s trust”(Deslatte, 2020, p. 489). For

public administrators, low levels of trust pose a signif‌icant

obstacle to the implementation of governmental policies.

With increasing polarization and politicization in the

United States, how might public administrators and off‌icials

be able to inf‌luence the aggregate levels of governmental

trust which are necessary for successful policy implementa-

tion? To this end, we ask whether public service motivation

(PSM) inf‌luences trust in government across the federal,

state, and local levels of government.

1

University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

2

Department of Political Science & Public Administration, UNC Charlotte,

Charlotte, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Colt Jensen, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA.

Email: colt.jensen@uga.edu

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2024, Vol. 54(2) 107–118

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/02750740231200449

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