The Integrative Model of Organizational Trust as a Framework for Understanding Trust in Government

We assess the applicability of Mayer, Schoorman, and Davis's (1995) Integrative Model of Organizational Trust for modelling citizens' trust in their government, using country-level survey data collected in four Western Trans-Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria) in 2010. Although the original model focused on trust between individuals, our fundamental supposition is that the model also applies to individuals' trust in an organizational-level entity: government. Our findings also suggest there are two separate dimensions to ability and benevolence/integrity associated with trust in government, as well as the existence of a new term that we hypothesize is related to government reputation.