Trust and expected costs as antecedents of citizens’ motivation to participate in public policymaking

Objectives. The present study aimed at testing whether costs, trustworthiness of government, and expected voice could predict citizens’ willingness to get involved in participatory governance processes. Participants and setting. Research participants were one-hundred and ninety-two volunteer students of Sapienza University of Rome, 66% female. Hypotheses. We hypothesized both main effects of trust (positive) and expected costs (negative) and an interactive effect of the two variables on citizens’ willingness to participate. We also expected voice to be a mediator of such an interaction effect on willingness to participate. Statistical analyses. A 2 (costs) by 2 (trust) ANOVA was applied both to manipulation checks and to motivation to participate. Following this, we performed a bootstrap mediated moderation analysis (Hayes, 2013). Results. Motivation to participate was significantly affected by trust, in fact participants in the high trust condition, were more willing to participate (M = 3.84, SD =.91) rather than those in the low trust condition (M = 3.31, SD =.99). Also, a main effect of costs emerged, with low costs inducing higher motivation to participate (M = 3.73, SD =.92) than high costs (M = 3.41, SD = 1.03). More importantly, these effects were qualified by the predicted interaction between costs and trust: while in the high trust condition costs did not affect willingness to participate, in the low costs condition they made a significant difference. Finally, mediated moderation analysis showed that that expected voice was responsible for the impact of the trust by costs interaction on motivation to participate. Limitation. The main limitation of the study concerns generalizability of its results across populations of different ages and occupation.