Digital Governance and Digital Literacy as Predictors of Citizen Participation in an Urban-Peripheral District of Lima, Peru

Abstract

Governments worldwide are digitizing public services, yet citizen participation remains uneven, particularly in Latin American municipalities where digital readiness lags behind policy ambitions. This study examines the association between municipal digital governance, citizens' digital literacy, and levels of citizen participation in San Juan de Miraflores, an urban-peripheral district of Metropolitan Lima, Peru (N = 384). Using a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional design, data were collected through three Likert-scale questionnaires (75 items) and analyzed with ordinal logistic regression (five models) in SPSS v26. Descriptive results indicated that most respondents reported medium levels across all three constructs (digital governance, 52.6%; digital literacy, 52.9%; citizen participation, 56.8%). The general model yielded a statistically significant association (χ² = 219.74, p < .001; Nagelkerke R² = .507; McFadden R² = .291), and both digital governance and digital literacy emerged as independent predictors of citizen participation with comparable odds ratios. Sensitivity analyses using empirical cut-points confirmed the direction and significance of all four general-model (M1) effects at α = .01. These findings provide dual-predictor evidence from a Latin American municipal setting, suggesting that investments in digital infrastructure and citizens' digital literacy should advance simultaneously to strengthen democratic participation.