How e-government and offline government services reconfigure citizens’ hierarchical government trust

Hierarchical government trust refers to the persistent trust gap wherein citizens hold far greater confidence in higher-tier governments than in local authorities, a widespread phenomenon observed across diverse governance systems. Online and offline channels represent two primary modes of public service delivery. Nevertheless, existing scholarship has not examined whether these two types of services exert differential impacts on hierarchical government trust. Drawing on valid data from 3,127 respondents of the 2023 China Social Governance Survey, this paper conducts empirical analyses using OLS regression, together with Bootstrap-based mediation and moderation techniques. The empirical results reveal three core findings. First, both e-government services and offline government services significantly attenuate hierarchical government trust. Second, local government performance evaluation acts as a critical mediating mechanism: high-quality services enhance citizens’ perceptions of local governance effectiveness, which strengthens public trust in local governments. Third, government role perception moderates the association between offline government services and hierarchical government trust. Citizens with stronger service-oriented perceptions experience a more substantial reduction in hierarchical government trust when accessing high-quality offline services. These findings provide actionable implications for policymakers to narrow the central-local trust divide and consolidate the legitimacy of multi-level governance in the digital era.