e-Voting: An Investigation of Factors that Affect Public Trust in Kingdom of Bahrain

One of the major fields that have applied ICT in the 21st century government is e-voting. Around the world, e-voting is taking place and is seen as highly important in many countries. However, in many countries, including the Kingdom of Bahrain, public trust toward voting using ICT tools is still a big challenge. This research aims to investigate the factors that affect public trust toward using e-voting system in Bahrain. A model of trust and risk was used from previous studies and several hypotheses were tested. A questionnaire was employed and 453 responses from citizens were collected in Bahrain. The findings revealed that there are significant factors that the governments should focus on to enhance public trust in the context of e-voting, which are: trust in e-voting; trust of government; perceived risk; disposition to trust and intention to use. The research strength of this study resides in its insights on the factors to be considered by the government to overcome the mistrust of using e-voting in Bahrain. The originality of this research resides on the application of a trust model that was applied in other countries in a new context.