Abstract
Institution-centered accounts of generalized trust rely on the idea that law-breaking and state’s unfairness lower individuals’ propensity to trust fellow citizens because of a weaker confidence in the state. Despite the theoretical relevance attributed to this mediation mechanism, no empirical analysis in the literature has focused on examining its correlational validity. Using data from the European Social Survey (2010), the Quality of Government EU Regional data, and EUROSTAT, this paper assesses the intervening role of institutional trust on the relationship between crime rates, state’s fairness, and generalized trust. Results from a Multilevel SEM (MSEM) mediation analysis indicate that trust in institutions strongly mediates the relationship between violent crimes (i.e. homicide) and generalized trust but not the one between property crimes (i.e. vehicle thefts and robberies) and generalized trust. On the other hand, indicators of fairness (i.e. impartiality and corruption) are all mediated by institutional trust, though impartiality maintains a significant direct effect. Overall, findings support the institutional approach, confirming that the negative relationship between ineffective and unfair institutions and generalized trust passes mostly through people’s lost faith in the state.
Highlights
Most of our daily social interactions involve anonymous others of which we know nothing or very little about
We examine a traditional institution-centered argument, and assess how the deficiency of state’s protection of citizens and institutions’ fairness correlates with individuals’ generalized trust, and if and to what extent this association is attributable to institutional trust
The analysis points out the relevance of usual predictors of social trust: age, gender, perceived health status, and being part of a discriminated group are all significantly correlated with generalized trust in the expected directions
Summary
Most of our daily social interactions involve anonymous others of which we know nothing or very little about. Contemporary societies tend to deeply rely on positive impersonal interactions among strangers who believe that their positive expectations about the behaviors of other actors will be reciprocated [1]. This propensity to trust people we do not know, that is to place generalized or social trust, has been argued to be a central feature of a prosperous society [2,3,4]. Studies looking at the impact of material deprivation, unemployment, crime and poverty rates on trust indicate that in areas where this social upheaval is more prominent, people are less likely to believe in the trustworthiness of their unknown fellow citizens, regardless of their personal condition [5,6,7,8,9,10]
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