The poorly ordered structure of "strong central government and weak local government" is a typical feature of civic government trust in China. Empirical evidence on whether and how Internet use, as an important way of shaping citizen government trust, affects differential government trust is scarce. Therefore, this paper empirically analyzes the data from the 2021 Comprehensive Survey of Social Conditions in China and finds that, after effectively dealing with endogeneity issues, Internet use strengthens poorly-ordered government trust, which is mainly achieved by increasing central government trust and decreasing local government trust, and the conclusion still holds when we use the robustness test by changing the measurement criteria, the propensity score matching method, and entropy equilibrium method. The results of mechanism analysis show that Internet use significantly reduces local government performance evaluation and weakens authoritarian values, which to some extent validates the explanatory logic of both institutional and cultural paths. The article provides a more effective explanation for the study of the relationship between Internet use and poorly ordered government trust, and offers important policy implications for improving the structure of political trust in the digital age.

“央强地弱”的差序结构是我国公民政府信任的典型特征。作为塑造公民政府信任的重要途径,互联网使用是否以及如何影响差序政府信任的研究较为匮乏。因此,本文运用2021年中国社会状况综合调查数据进行实证分析,研究发现:在有效处理内生性问题后,互联网使用强化了差序政府信任,主要通过提高中央政府信任和降低地方政府信任来实现,且采用改变测量标准、倾向得分匹配法和熵均衡法来进行稳健性检验,结论依然成立。机制分析结果表明,互联网使用会显著降低地方政府绩效评价及削弱权威主义价值观,在一定程度上验证了制度主义和文化主义的解释逻辑。文章为互联网使用与差序政府信任关系的研究提供了更有效度的解释,并为改善数字时代的政治信任结构提供了重要的政策启示。