Corruption, institutional trust and political engagement in Peru

Abstract

• Experimental methods show that corruption information causally reduces citizen trust in political institutions. • Corruption information does not motivate citizen citizen political action in the form of small donations to an anti-corruption NGO. • Petty corruption information significantly decreases institutional trust while grand corruption information does not. • Discussing the consequences of corruption decreases institutional trust even when the potential consequences are positive. Widespread corruption and lack of trust in political institutions are common development problems that are likely deeply interconnected. We contribute to the existing understanding of their relationship using survey experimental methods and by investigating how different dimensions of corruption affect trust. Does grand versus petty corruption affect citizen trust in political institutions? What about corruption with positive versus negative consequences? After presenting respondents in Peru with randomly assigned information about these specific aspects of political corruption, we measure 1) attitudes about trust in government institutions and 2) behavioral engagement in anti-corruption efforts through donations to a well-known Peruvian NGO. We find that petty corruption, but not grand corruption, decreased institutional trust compared to a control. Additionally, in contrast to previous findings showing that “beneficial” corruption reduces electoral punishments for individual politicians, both positive and negative consequences decreased institutional trust. Corruption information did not alter donations to an NGO. Going beyond the correlations found in prior observational studies, this paper demonstrates a causal relationship between corruption information and institutional trust. Our results signal the importance of addressing petty corruption to improve public trust. They also emphasize important difficulties in motivating citizen action against corruption because anti-corruption messaging can decrease trust, while failing to motivate even low-cost political action.