Effect Of Trust In Government Research Articles

Fear, trust, and compliance with COVID-19 measures: a study of the mediating effect of trust in government on the relationship between fear and compliance

Abstract As the COVID-19 pandemic became an unprecedented global threat, it was accompanied by an increase in trust in governments as well as fear among the public. Previous research suggests that both institutional trust and fear contribute to the willingness of citizens to comply with anti-pandemic measures. Moreover, fear during the contagion also increases trust in government. This article presents a test of the mediation of the effects of fear on compliance through trust. In addition, it differentiates between three different facets of COVID-19-related fear: fear of the disease, fear of economic consequences, and fear of political consequences. The results suggest that while fear of the disease increases compliance, fear of political consequences decreases compliance. Moreover, the effects of fear are mediated through trust in government. The negative impact of fear of political consequences on compliance increased between April and December 2020.

The Effect of Trust in Government and Perceptions of Tax Justice on Tax Compliance with Job Type as Moderation (Empirical Study on Individual Taxpayers Registered at Jayapura Primary Tax Service Office)

This study aims to analyze and provide empirical evidence of the effect of trust in government and perceptions of tax justice on tax compliance with job type as moderation at the Jayapura Primary Tax Service Office. The study's population consists of all Individual Taxpayers (WPOP) who are registered at KPP Pratama Jayapura, with a total population of 283,000 taxpayers. The study's sample comprised 100 respondents who were taxpayers. The researchers employed a non-probability sampling method, specifically convenience sampling techniques. The data gathering process involved the distribution of questionnaires to the respondents. The acquired data was then subjected to analysis using the Structural Equation Model (SEM) technique, employing the Partial Least Square (PLS) method within the WarpPLS 7.0 program. The test results of this study indicate that (1) trust in government has a positive and significant effect on tax compliance; (2) perceptions of tax justice have a positive and significant effect on tax compliance; (3) job type has not been able to moderate the effect of trust in government on tax compliance; and (4) job type has not been able to moderate the effect of perceptions of tax justice on tax compliance.

How can value added tax compliance be incentivized? An experimental examination of trust in government and tax compliance costs

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the relationship between trust in government, value added tax (VAT) compliance costs and VAT compliance in the Jordanian retail industry context.Design/methodology/approachThe study makes use of an online questionnaire survey to collect the required data, and the research model is eventually validated based on 189 responses gathered from the retail industry in Jordan. The obtained data was analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling to examine the effects of trust in government and costs of VAT compliance on VAT compliance.FindingsThe results showed that VAT compliance costs have no significant influence on VAT compliance; while trust in government was found statistically positive significant with VAT compliance.Practical implicationsThis study’s results are expected to have implications for VAT authorities and policymakers in Arab countries, like Jordan in their policies formulation to enhance VAT compliance in retail industry. The study’s findings are alerting the policymakers for the positive noneconomic consequences of VAT compliance. It provides evidence that trust in government can increase VAT compliance.Social implicationsThe results of the research have a plentiful of social implications. Higher VAT compliance will enable higher levels of government spending on a many of social targets such as health, education, welfare programs and infrastructure.Originality/valueWhile the study builds on recent research examining how to incentivize VAT compliance, it simultaneously seeks to make three contributions. First, the study design aims to apply recent advances in behavioral sciences (impact of trust in government and VAT compliance costs) in a policy area that has not seen much use of such interventions in the Jordanian context (i.e. VAT compliance). Second, the study is government procedures pertinent in the sense that it aims to increase the effectiveness of existing government policies by complementing them with behavioral primes. Third, there is nearly no literature found applying this topic in a developing country such as Jordan. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that examines the trust in government and VAT compliance costs on VAT compliance among Jordanian retail industry. Thus, this paper contributes to mitigating the literature gap by providing empirical evidence concerning the influence of trust in government and VAT compliance costs on the retail industry VAT compliance in the Jordanian context.

Examining the Effect of Situational Awareness and Health Protection Behaviour on Loneliness and Hopelessness in COVID-19 Process

This study focuses on feelings of loneliness and hopelessness in which COVID-19 was created. The research addresses the following questions: (a) How does trust in government or media affect loneliness and hopelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic? (b) How does trust in interpersonal information affect loneliness and hopelessness? (c) What is the mediating role of perceived personal sensitivity, hand hygiene, and social distance in the effect of trust in government or media on loneliness and hopelessness? (d) What is the mediating role of perceived personal sensitivity, hand hygiene, and social distance in the effect of trust on interpersonal information on loneliness and hopelessness? Trust in government or media information ( β: 0.200) positively affects Situational Awareness variables. While Trust in interpersonal information ( β: −0.106) affects negatively. Situational Awareness creates a negative effect on Loneliness ( β: −0.129) and Hopeless ( β: −0.155), while Health Protective Response affects positively. Finally, Health Protective Response negatively affects Loneliness ( β: 0.245) and Hopeless ( β: 0.253). Interpersonal information, on the other hand, causes individuals to feel both hopeless and lonely. And, when the relationship between individuals’ health protective response with hopelessness and loneliness is examined, it is understood that both health protection responses negatively affect these two emotional states, even if they have different effect levels. As individuals display health protection responses, they have higher hopes for the future and the loneliness felt decreases.

Trust and vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-national analysis

Previous studies of vaccine hesitancy in the context of COVID-19 have reported mixed results in terms of the role played by political and institutional trust. This study addresses this ambiguity with a global analysis of the relationship between trust and vaccine hesitancy, disentangling the effects of generalized trust orientations, trust in specific institutions and conspiracy mentality. It first draws upon a cross-national survey of 113 countries to demonstrate that trust in government is a predictor of vaccine hesitancy across global regions. It further draws on original surveys fielded in seven countries (France, Germany, Spain, Argentina, Croatia, Brazil, India), which deploy a diverse range of measures, to disentangle the individual-level predictors of vaccine hesitancy. Our findings confirm the robust effects of trust in government across countries, but when including other trust measures in the same models, the most robust effects are those of trust in health institutions and conspiracy mentality. Weaker associations are observed for right-wing ideology and online political engagement, while the consumption of traditional media tends to predict the willingness of individuals to be vaccinated.

Examining the influence of governance on the quality of public services: the moderating effect of trust in government

Examining the influence of governance on the quality of public services: the moderating effect of trust in government

Trust in government and intention to emigrate in a post-soviet country: Evidence from Azerbaijan

Intention to emigrate has been one of the most challenging issues globally over the last decade for both migrant-sending and receiving countries. Rising emigration intentions trigger migration attempts and brain drain, while migrant-receiving countries are challenged by illegal emigration. Self-perceived trust in government is one of the fundamental determinants of citizens' emigration aspirations. This research applies path analyses to explore direct and indirect effects of trust in government on emigrating intentions in a post-soviet country – Azerbaijan. Using a pool of two social survey data (N=4092,n_Male=2106,n_Female=1986,〖Mean〗_Age=31.82) within a serial mediation analysis framework, we conclude that the trust in government has a significant direct (65-70%) and indirect (30-35%) negative impact on emigration aspirations among the people of Azerbaijan. The relationship is mediated by self-reported life satisfaction. Perceived income adequacy also mediates the relationship indirectly via life satisfaction. A key novelty of the study is that, contrary to popular belief, emigration aspirations in Azerbaijan are revealed to be less economic in motivation and are mainly explained by the lack of trust in government, which also reduces individuals' satisfaction with life. Therefore, improving the quality of public services and the trust in government institutions would reverse intentions to emigrate. The research can be replicated in other developing countries, and the findings can be used to design policies aimed at controlling international emigration issues.

Go for zero tolerance: Cultural values, trust, and acceptance of zero-COVID policy in two Chinese societies.

This study seeks to explain the wide acceptance of the stringent zero-COVID policy in two Chinese societies-Mainland China (n = 2,184) and Taiwan (n = 1,128)-from perspectives of cultural values and trust. By employing the efficacy mechanism, this study identifies significant indirect effects of trust in government and key opinion leaders (KOL) on people's policy acceptance in both societies. Namely, people who interpret the pandemic as a collectivist issue and who trust in government will be more accepting of the zero-COVID policy, whereas those who framed the pandemic as an individual issue tend to refuse the policy. Trust in government and KOLs foster these direct relationships, but trust in government functions as a more important mediator in both societies. The different contexts of the two Chinese societies make the difference when shaping these relationships. These findings provide practical considerations for governmental agencies and public institutions that promote the acceptance of the zero-COVID policy during the pandemic.

Count on trust: the indirect effect of trust in government on policy compliance with health behavior instructions.

Trust in government is considered a prominent factor for enhancing public compliance with government policies and instructions. The Coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the crucial role public compliance with governmentally issued health guidelines has in mitigating the pandemic. However, the mechanism explaining the trust-compliance association, particularly in regard to health-behavior compliance, is unclear. This article develops a new theoretical model, the Mediated Trust Model (MTM), for explaining the relationship between trust in government and public compliance with health instructions. The model extends the classic Health Belief Model for predicting health behavior by claiming that the perceptions regarding the instructions' costs, benefits and one's ability to perform them are affected by trust in government and mediate the trust-compliance association. The MTM was tested in four cross-sectional studies performed during the first 20months of the Coronavirus pandemic in Israel on 3732 participants, for various health instructions. Implications for public health literature, policy compliance theory and policy makers are discussed.

A duality of belief in conspiracy theories amplification: how active communicative actions work differently by trust in the Trump and Biden administrations

AbstractPurposeThe digital setting empowers users to actively engage in communicative actions. The problem is that this active communication can increase misjudgment in determining the facts around social issues. When this communication is integrated with partisan biases, the effects can be particularly detrimental. Our study tested whether active communication actions regarding social issues and different trust levels toward presidential administrations (Trump vs. Biden) would increase belief in conspiracy theories.Design/methodology/approachTo examine this, the study used online survey datasets (Amazon Mechanical Turk,N = 1355) collected during July and August 2021 concerning three political issues: the Afghanistan issue, the Black Lives Matter issue, and the Voter Fraud issue.FindingsThe findings show that among participants with more active communication actions, the higher Trump government trust is and the lower Biden government trust is, the more belief in conspiracy theories increases. Interestingly, interaction effects of trust in government and active communicative actions were found among both Trump and Biden supporters.Practical/Social ImplicationsCombined with preexisting efforts to tackle misinformation online, there are extensive efforts underway to educate laypeople about the dangers of misinformation. People must understand that any person could fall into belief in conspiracy theories if they do not carefully diagnose their information behaviors.Originality/ValueOur study can increase knowledge about people’s situational belief in conspiracy theories based on their political stance. The study can support future research, promoting a deeper understanding of belief in conspiracy theories.

Public trust and collaborative governance: an instrumental variable approach

ABSTRACT This research investigates the effects of trust in government on citizens’ perceptions of collaborative governance. To overcome endogeneity of measuring trust in traditional surveys, I proposed an alternative design that uses randomly assigned public integrity information as the instrumental variable of trust in government. The results from two online experiments indicate that citizens have strong preferences on public-citizen partnership, regardless the variations of trust in government. Moreover, trust in government has nonlinear effects on perceived public-private partnership and willingness to coproduce. These findings provide new opportunities to study public trust and offer implications to further develop collaborative governance theory.

Searching for the New Behavioral Model in Energy Transition Age: Analyzing the Forward and Reverse Causal Relationships between Belief, Attitude, and Behavior in Nuclear Policy across Countries.

This study aims to analyze the forward/reverse causal relationships between belief (risk perception), attitude (judgment), and behavior (acceptance). A traditional view stresses forward causal relationships between the three variables. However, recently, several studies have reported the possibility of reverse causal relationships between them. Based on survey data collected from 1027 Korean/Japanese participants, here we test not only the forward or reverse relationships between these three variables, but also how such causal relationships depend on the trust and country contexts (Korea and Japan in this study). The results showed that, first, not only a general forward causal relationship but also reverse causal relationship exists between belief, attitude, and behavior. Second, there exist the moderated mediation and mediated moderation effect of trust in government and media across two countries. Third, the effects of trust in government and media work significantly overall. However, the patterns of interaction effects differ between two countries. The level of trust in the government influenced the belief and attitude of citizens in Japan more than in Korea. However, the level of trust in the media showed opposite results.

Life Satisfaction and Incumbent Voting: Examining the Mediating Effect of Trust in Government.

An emerging body of evidence suggests a causal relationship between wellbeing and incumbent voting. However, the evidence is primarily founded upon established democracies with regular turnovers of power. Moreover, the mechanism underlying this relationship is still relatively unknown. Using the intricacies of the Malaysian political context and Malaysian data from the seventh wave of the World Values Survey (WVS), this study examines the mediating role of trust in government to explain the relationship between life satisfaction and incumbent voting. Notably, the Malaysian WVS was concluded two weeks before Malaysia’s fourteenth general election (GE14), which witnessed the end of the ruling coalition’s six-decade hold on power since independence and subsequently ushered in the country’s first-ever peaceful transfer of power. The empirical analysis indicated that the mediating role of trust in the relationship between life satisfaction and incumbent voting is supported. Further empirical analysis also showed that the mediating effect of trust was unique to the GE14 context compared to GE13, thus providing a better understanding of the role trust plays in the outcome of the election. The results provide valuable insights and implications in political science, especially for a nation emerging from its authoritarian state.

The effect of trust in government on elections during the COVID‐19 pandemic in South Korea

Recent studies focused on the pandemic's effect on elections, examining partial government interventions (e.g., lockdowns) or a specific area within a country. Governments have taken a variety of nationwide measures in reaction to the pandemic, and they may or may not be working in the best interests of citizens. If citizens believe that a government demonstrates competence, benevolence and honesty in making pandemic‐related decisions, trust in that government may grow, affecting election results. Using data for trust in government and nationwide elections during the pandemic in South Korea, we find that trust in government completely mediates the relationship between the number of confirmed cases of COVID‐19 and the results of elections (i.e., ruling party's win and vote share).

Does trust in government improve Covid-19's crisis management?

Countries have adopted several measures to control the spread of Covid-19. However, substantial differences remain in terms of performance in controlling the virus, potentially due to heterogeneity in citizen engagement with government measures. Although the literature documents the effects of trust in government on compliance with health restrictions related to the health crisis, little is said about the direct effect of trust in government on managing the Covid-19 crisis, defined as the number of cases and deaths. Drawing on this observation, this paper seeks to analyze the effect of pre–crisis ties, particularly trust in government, on crisis management, proxied by the number of Covid-19 cases and deaths per million population. We examine this question based on a sample of 41 countries for which data are available and using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method. Results reveal that a high level of trust in government predicts better crisis management in terms of relatively low levels of cases and deaths. These results, which successfully pass a series of robustness tests, may vary according to level of contamination and increase with time. This paper, therefore, suggests that building trust between the public and the authorities, essentially governments and citizens, is essential for crisis management, taking the example of the Covid-19 pandemic.

When and How Trust in Government Leads to Compliance with COVID-19 Precautionary Measures

Despite the risks of COVID-19, some people ignore the COVID-19 precautionary measures, endangering public health. We aimed to investigate how and in what conditions trust in government and health authorities encourage individuals to comply with COVID-19 precautionary measures. Based on a sample of 664 respondents, we found that an increase in the level of trust in government is associated with higher compliance with COVID-19 precautionary measures. We also found that problem awareness mediates the effect of trust in government on compliance with COVID-19 precautionary measures. In addition, we examined whether individualistic orientation moderates the mediating effect of problem awareness. We found that individualistic orientation mitigates the mediating effect of problem awareness in the relationship between trust in government and compliance behavior. The findings of this study have the potential to inform policy and practice by addressing the ways in which compliance with COVID-19 precautionary measures can be improved.

Valuation of Trust in Government: The Wellbeing Valuation Approach

Subjective wellbeing maximization is a possible goal of government or public policies, and it is often considered the goal of individual life. This paper proposes an estimation using the Wellbeing Valuation Approach (WVA) to estimate the monetized effect of trust in government. Using a cross-country panel data set for 97 countries in the period from 2011 to 2019, we arrive at three main findings. First, there is a positive relationship between trust in national government and average life satisfaction. Second, trust in the national government has a global median value of Intl$ 5649 per person a year in foregone income. Third, trust affects life satisfaction directly as well as indirectly through per capita GDP. This indirect effect is considered relatively small compared to the direct effect, being approximately six times smaller. This study contributes to the policy evaluation literature by providing an evaluation of trust in government to be used as a proxy to plan future investment or policy assessment.

The Impact of Emotion and Government Trust on Individuals’ Risk Information Seeking and Avoidance during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-country Comparison

This study examines the emotional mechanisms of how public trust in the governments’ actions to address the COVID-19 pandemic shapes individuals’ risk information-seeking and avoidance. To make cross-cultural comparisons, we conducted a multi-country survey early in the pandemic in South Korea, the United States (US) and Singapore. The results suggest that trust was negatively related to fear, anger, sadness and anxiety, and positively related to hope. These emotions were significant mediators of the effect of trust on information seeking and avoidance, except for anger on avoidance. Importantly, the indirect effects of trust in government varied by country. Fear was a stronger mediator between trust and information seeking in South Korea than in the US. In contrast, sadness and anger played more prominent mediating roles in Singapore than in South Korea. This study offers theoretical insights into better understanding the roles of discrete emotions in forming information behaviors. The findings of this study also inform communication strategies that seek to navigate trust in managing pandemics that impact multiple nations.

Extending the Coverage of the Trust–Acceptability Model: The Negative Effect of Trust in Government on Nuclear Power Acceptance in South Korea under a Nuclear Phase-Out Policy

This article extends the coverage of the trust–acceptability model to a new situation of nuclear phase-out by investigating the effect of trust on the public acceptance of nuclear power, with South Korea as the research setting. Through the structural equation modeling of a nationwide survey dataset from South Korea, we examined the effects of the public’s trust in the various actors related to nuclear power on their perceptions of the benefits and risks of nuclear power and their acceptance of nuclear power. Contrary to previous studies’ findings, in South Korea, under a nuclear phase-out policy by the government, trust in government revealed a negative impact on the public acceptance of nuclear power. Trust in environmental non-governmental groups also showed a negative effect on nuclear power acceptance. In contrast, trust in nuclear energy authority and trust in nuclear academia both had positive effects. In all cases, the effect of a trust variable on nuclear power acceptance was at least partially accounted for by the trust’s indirect effects through benefit perception and risk perception. These findings strengthen the external validity of the trust–acceptability model and provide implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Trust in Government and Social Isolation during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Brazil

ABSTRACT Government actions can help to convince populations to participate in the resolution of collective problems. However, in order for citizens to feel motivated to contribute to managing a public health problem, it is necessary to develop a relationship based on trust. Therefore, this study analyzes the effect of trust in government on the behaviour of citizens related to the adoption of social isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic, through a survey with 1,154 citizens from the state of Ceará in northeastern Brazil. Additionally, the factors which are associated with the adoption of social isolation and trust in government were verified. The results showed that trust in government positively affects citizens’ behavior related to social isolation, suggesting that the bond between government and society, developed through citizens’ trust in government, contributes to more effective combatting of Covid-19. In addition, it was identified that gender, education, and occupation are associated with the adoption of social isolation and trust in government. Place of residence and income are associated only with the adoption of social isolation. Finally, it was verified that people who live with someone in the high-risk group for Covid-19 tend to comply with social isolation more strictly and trust the government more. In contrast, people who tested positive or presented symptoms of the disease comply with social isolation less effectively and trust the government less.