Abstract
The trust of the public for government is greatly damaged because of the frequent occurrence of public crisis event, which has resulted in serious trust crisis of the government. To date trust repair has been a key issue to study by local governments. This paper researches that the initial trust of the public for government and the severity and attribution of public crisis event are exerted influence upon the trust damage of government under the political and cultural environment of current China in the methods of situational simulated and questionnaire survey. Moreover, the repair effects of two different trust repair strategies (denial and apology) are verified in this paper as well. The research findings show that the strength level of initial trust of the public for government and the severity of the public crisis event are positively correlated with the trust damage of government; different attribution of different public crisis event is made no difference with different damage degree of trust of government; different trust repair strategy is made significant difference upon repair effect, and the repair effect of apology is better than that of denial; the strength level of initial trust of the public for government is positively correlated with the repair effect of trust of government, that is to say, if the initial trust of the public upon government is stringer, the damaged trust of government will be easier to repair. Theoretical perspective of trust repair of government is expanded in this paper, which has provided repair strategy and solution for trust crisis caused by government in the current situation of China.
Highlights
Trust shall be fundamental principle of governing the relationship between government and the public [1].How to cite this paper: Peng, X.B., Gong, W.G. and Peng, M.L. (2016) Empirical Study on Trust Repair of Government in Public Crisis Event
With the rapid development of Chinese economy and society, the public crisis event has been occurred frequently, such as Sanlu Milk Powder Incident, Violent Law-enforcement of City Inspector, forced relocation and other negative public event being repeatedly exposed by media or network, which has a severe impact on government image among the public, by which the credibility and authority of government have been questioned, which will lead to the trust crisis of government
Trust repair model has been put forward by organizational behavior scholars from the perspective of cognition, scene and institution, with some representatives such as attribution model proposed by Tomlinson and Mayer (2009) and dynamic bilateral model proposed by Kim and Driks & Cooper (2009) and four-step model proposed by Gillespie & Dietz (2009) [4] [14] [22], among which attribution theory is one of the most common repair theories, referring to the perception process of one party upon sabotage caused by the other party, which is mainly used to solve problems at the level of recognition and perception
Summary
Trust shall be fundamental principle of governing the relationship between government and the public [1]. (2016) Empirical Study on Trust Repair of Government in Public Crisis Event. Influence of public crisis event upon trust for government and the method to repair damaged trust for government have been important issues of local governments. This paper researches that the initial trust of the public for government and the severity and attribution of public crisis event are exerted influence upon the trust damage of government under the political and cultural environment of current China, and different trust repair strategies have been tested empirically in the methods of situational simulated and questionnaire survey
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