Postmaterialist Influences on Welfare Adequacy and Political Trust in Hong Kong

Abstract

A supposed function for the government to provide social welfare is to sustain trust in the government. This rests on the thesis that people's satisfaction with material interest is a basis for their political trust. An alternative view, however, suggests that people's postmaterialist orientation fosters cynicism toward public welfare provision and the government. This view thus proposes that postmaterialist orientation explains away the influence of perceived welfare adequacy on political trust. For a test of this proposition, this study employs survey data from 2,350 Hong Kong Chinese to clarify the relationships among political trust, perceived welfare adequacy, and postmaterialist orientation. Lending support to the proposition, the study shows that the presence of postmaterialist orientation as a predictor greatly reduced the impact of perceived welfare adequacy on political trust. Moreover, postmaterialist orientation was a more important predictor of both perceived welfare adequacy and political trust.