American Trust: Confidence in the Ability of the United States Government to Successfully Respond to Acts of Cyberterrorism

Determining the impact of cyberterrorism – a relatively recent construct – on individuals’ trust in the United States government is an area of study lacking longitudinal research. Existing studies provide only topical analysis, leaving room for significant academic research into an emerging topic of substantial concern. This study aims to determine whether American citizens trust the United States government to respond to cyber attacks targeting government entities and public infrastructure, areas likely to be determined to be acts of cyberterrorism. The results from this study indicate that queried individuals’ age, sex, political ideology, education, and employment statuses have a statistically significant impact on the respondents’ overall trust in their government’s ability to adequately respond to cyber attacks targeting both government and public entities and infrastructure