Trust in times of crisis: opportunities and pitfalls of cooperation between volunteers and local governments

Abstract

During the so-called refugee crisis of 2015/16 an estimated 25% of the German population was actively engaged as volunteers. Volunteers thus constitute a group of citizens who are high stake actors in crisis management due to their personal experience and direct interaction with the local public administration. This paper scrutinizes how the interaction between volunteers and local administrations in crisis management affects volunteers’ trust in the local public administration. Following the literature on administrative crisis management and cross-sector collaboration, the paper defines relevant features of crisis management performance. Methodologically, the paper relies on regression analysis using online survey data from a snowballing sample comprising 900 volunteers who engaged during Germany’s 2015/16 migration crisis. The results show that performance perception of the local administration, and the formalization of the different volunteer organizations explain how volunteers’ trust in the public administration changes over the course of the crisis.