Institutional Trust, Regulatory Legitimacy, and Blockchain-Enabled Public Service Innovation in Developing Economies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63646/DVFY8078Keywords:
Blockchain; public service innovation; institutional trust; regulatory legitimacy; developing economies; digital government; TOE framework; structural equation modelingAbstract
Blockchain has become a prominent infrastructure for digital government, yet its public-sector value in developing economies depends on more than technical feasibility. It also depends on whether citizens and civil servants perceive the system as institutionally trustworthy, legitimate, and administratively capable of improving service delivery. Building on the research direction of public-sector blockchain adoption studies that apply the Technology-Organization-Environment perspective and structural equation modeling, this article develops an institution-centered framework for blockchain-enabled public service innovation in developing economies. The framework links blockchain capability, institutional trust, regulatory legitimacy, organizational readiness, and public service innovation readiness. To strengthen the analytical contribution without reporting unverified field data, the empirical section presents a reproducible simulation-calibrated survey analysis with 428 synthetic public-sector observations, designed to illustrate construct reliability, convergent validity, structural relationships, mediation, and moderation patterns that future field studies can test. The results indicate that blockchain capability is associated with public service innovation mainly through institutional trust and regulatory legitimacy, while the direct technical effect is weaker than the institutional pathways. The analysis also suggests that trust and legitimacy reinforce each other: blockchain pilots are most likely to support public service innovation when transparent records, data protection safeguards, lawful authority, and citizen-facing accountability are jointly present. The study contributes to digital government research by reframing blockchain adoption from a technology acceptance problem into a governance legitimacy problem. It offers practical guidance for developing economies that seek to use permissioned blockchain systems for registries, procurement, licensing, welfare payments, and inter-agency data verification while avoiding symbolic pilots, legal uncertainty, and digital exclusion.
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