Paralingual Web Design and Trust in E-Government

Abstract

Can Web design improve the way governments serve their constituencies through the use of information technology [i.e., e-government]? This article proposes that the use of paralingual Web design can overcome possible trust issues in egovernment with bilingual populations. An experiment was conducted where active e-government Web pages were converted to paralingual format and then site visitors were surveyed regarding their trust in the content and readability. The results of the experiment show that trust was improved for the minority language speakers, while the majority language speakers remained neutral with neither group indicating significant decrease in readability. These findings have important implications for societies with large bilingual or multilingual populations, where issues of trust among minority speakers and majority speakers may exist, as they indicate that paralingual Web design can help reduce these trust issues.