The roles of accountability and transparency on public trust in the village governments: The intervening role of COVID-19 handling services quality

Abstract

This study aims to examine the relationship between accountability and transparency during the COVID-19 pandemic towards public trust in village governments through the quality of COVID-19 handling services as an intervening variable. This research was conducted among village governments in the Yogyakarta Special Region Province, Indonesia. The data were collected by distributing survey questionnaires, with 116 village governments participating in this study. Respondents in this study were represented by two groups, where village officials measured accountability and transparency practices, while members of the Village Representative Council measured the quality of COVID-19 handling services and public trust variables. Partial Least Square (PLS) was then used to test the hypotheses. The results showed that accountability for managing the COVID-19 response budget only had an indirect positive relationship with public trust through the quality of COVID-19 handling services. Meanwhile, the direct relationship between accountability and trust was negatively significant. Furthermore, transparency in the management of the COVID-19 response budget was not associated with the public trust, either directly or indirectly.