Levels Of Trust In Institutions Research Articles

Variations in vaccination uptake: COVID-19 vaccination rates in Swedish municipalities.

Facing the threat of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines are important for limiting the spread and consequences of the pandemic. In this study, we provide a descriptive overview of the within-country variations of vaccine rates by examining to what extent voter turnout, support for an anti-establishment political party (Sweden Democrats), presence of first-generation immigrants, and Evangelical religiosity are associated with the within-country variation in vaccine uptake rates. We use official register data for municipality-level vaccine rates and municipality-level regressions with regional fixed effects. Our analyses show that vaccine uptake, on average, is lower in municipalities where the anti-establishment political party Sweden Democrats has higher vote shares and where a larger share of the population is first-generation immigrants. We discuss that potential explanations for these associations between vote shares for an anti-establishment party and shares of first-generation immigrants could be lower levels of trust in institutions and language barriers.

Attitudes towards Vaccines, Intent to Vaccinate and the Relationship with COVID-19 Vaccination Rates in Individuals with Schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia patients are at high risk of developing severe COVID-19 outcomes but recent evidence suggests that they are under-vaccinated. This study explored the role of potential attitudinal barriers by comparing schizophrenia patients with participants from the general population regarding COVID-19 vaccination rates, general attitudes towards vaccines, and willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine. We conducted a cross-sectional study between April 2021 and October 2021. A total of 100 people with schizophrenia and 72 nonclinical controls were recruited. In our study, individuals with schizophrenia were under-vaccinated, despite similar general attitudes towards vaccination and higher willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19 compared to nonclinical participants. In patients, negative attitudes toward vaccines were related to higher levels of negative psychotic symptoms and higher levels of paranoid ideation. As a whole, participants with more negative attitudes towards vaccines were less likely to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and had lower levels of trust in institutions. Vaccine hesitancy does not appear to be a major barrier for COVID-19 vaccine uptake amongst people with schizophrenia. This study suggests that disparities in COVID-19 vaccination rates in schizophrenia do not seem related to attitudinal but rather structural barriers.

Marketing Competence and Institutional Trust in Business

Trust in institutions can have important benefits for a country’s overall well-being. However, research on the specific factors that engender institutional trust in business remains limited. To this end, the authors conduct two studies to examine the impact of marketing competence on institutional trust in business. First, they compile a data set of trust in business perceptions among the general public from 26 countries from 2011–2017. Drawing on institutional theory and the capabilities-based view, the authors examine the effect of country-level business competence in marketing on a country’s level of institutional trust in business. Country-level panel data analysis indicates that the level of marketing competence of a country's businesses positively impacts public trust in business in the country. Results also indicate that this effect strengthens when confidence in government is low. Second, an experiment explores the mediating pathways by which marketing competence fosters this effect on public trust in business. Together, these findings provide new insight into the concept of institutional trust in business and showcase the role of marketing in creating such trust.

Institutional Trust as a Factor in Attitudes Toward New Technologies

The success of the country's innovative development depends not only on the supply side (production of innovative products), but also on the demand side – the readiness of the population to adopt new technologies. In this article we test two hypotheses using data from representative surveys conducted in 2018 and 2020. The first hypothesis is about a positive relationship between institutional trust (trust in federal, regional and municipal authorities), belief in the security of personal data collected by the state and attitudes towards new technologies (in the field of healthcare and unmanned vehicles). The hypothesis is based on the assumption that the state is perceived as a guarantor of the quality of the institutional environment and the infrastructure used, which are important for ensuring the safety of the introduction and use of new technologies. The second hypothesis is about a negative relationship between institutional trust and attitudes towards medical technologies, which act as a substitute for the functions that a person performs as part of his job duties. It is based on the assumption that in the case of low institutional trust, the population makes an increased demand for technologies that can replace the activities of a person working in a state system that they do not trust. The results show that, regardless of the type of technologies considered, higher levels of institutional trust and confidence in the security of personal data collected by the state is positively related with attitudes toward new technologies. The results obtained are important for building institutional and informational measures aimed at increasing the acceptance of new technologies by the population. It can also be important to customize measures for specific socio-demographic groups of the population, taking into account the level of institutional trust in the group.

Corruption and life satisfaction: Evidence from a transition survey

AbstractFighting corruption cannot lie exclusively on appropriate formal institutions. It also requires social support and public engagement. Particularly in countries under institutional and economic transition. We embrace the recent perspective arguing that higher quality of life conditions makes people better citizens, more civically committed and more conformed to institutional rules. Accordingly, we study whether life satisfaction is a predictor of individuals' corruption aversion across 28 former socialist countries from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. We use data from the third wave of the Life in Transition Survey (2015–2016). 2SLS estimations suggest that individuals reporting higher scores of life satisfaction are more averse to corruption. Our results are robust to a series of sensitivity analyses. Additionally, we estimate predicted values of corruption aversion for different levels of institutional trust across low and high life satisfaction groups. We find that when institutional trust is very low, its impact on corruption aversion does not differ between life satisfaction groups. As institutional trust increases so does corruption aversion and this occurs even more amongst the group of respondents with high life satisfaction.

Public perceptions of the association between drug effectiveness and drug novelty in France during the COVID-19 pandemic

ObjectivesDuring the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, public debates overtly addressed the promises of new innovative drugs. Many of these debates pitted those who advocated for the development of new drugs by pharmaceutical companies against those who favored the repositioning of existing drugs. Our study explored perceptions of the association between drug novelty and effectiveness as well as perceptions of the role of the pharmaceutical industry in drug development.MethodsData were collected in January 2021 from a quota sample of the French population aged 18–75 years (n = 1,000) during the second round of the “Health Literacy Survey 2019” (HLS19).ResultsWe tested the hypothesis that individuals with a high level of familiarity with the health care system and those with a high level of trust in institutions are more likely to agree that new drugs are more effective than old ones and that drug development should be driven by the pharmaceutical industry. A quarter (25%) of respondents agreed that new drugs are always more effective than old ones. Agreement with this statement was stronger among respondents with a high level of familiarity with the health care system (as measured by the navigational health literacy score, OR 3.34 [2.13–5.24]). Respondents with a low level of trust in pharmaceutical companies or politicians were two times less likely to agree that new drugs are always more effective than old ones (OR 0.63 [0.42–0.95] and OR 0.68 [0.49–0.94], respectively). A high level of trust in pharmaceutical companies was reported by 42% of respondents, and 43% agreed that drug development should be driven by the pharmaceutical industry.ConclusionOur study shows that the perceived effectiveness of innovative drugs is associated with familiarity with the health care system and trust in institutions.

The staff of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Ukraine: in search of optimal ways of formation

It has been provided a comparative study of the national legal systems of some European Union member states with a high level of civil society confidence in the justice system, in terms of the formation of the prosecutor’s office as part of this system.
 It has been stated that in order to substantiate the timeliness and demand for measures of the current stage of reforming the prosecutor’s office in Ukraine, the criterion of the level of civil society trust in the prosecutor’s office is set, which fully meets the European standard of functioning of this institution in a democratic society.
 Taking into account the unsatisfactory state of functioning of the existing model of prosecution authorities in Ukraine, from the point of view of the level of support provided by society, there is a need to study the formation of prosecutors in foreign countries in order to gain successful experience in establishing this important institution in the state justice system.
 It has been highlighted the peculiarities of the legal policy on determining the qualification requirements for candidates for the position of prosecutor, selection procedures and professional training of prosecutors in the Member States of the European Union with a high level of civil society trust in institutions that provide due justice.
 It has been established that a high level of civil society trust to the justice system is, to a decisive extent, a projection of a certain legal policies of these states, aimed at methodological academic and special professional training of the judiciary staff, including prosecutors.
 It is concluded that simplification of the procedure for selection and training of prosecutors may not always indicate its improvement, as only a systematic change in the special training of candidates for the position of prosecutor and further training of incumbent prosecutors, taking into account best practices, can contribute to high level their professional competence as a prerequisite for increasing the level of trust of civil society in the prosecutor’s office as an institution as a whole.

Институциональное доверие как медиатор связи метаценностей с эмиграционной установкой российской молодежи

In science, there have been no attempts to study institutional trust as an intermediary between the emigration attitude and meta-values, which actualizes this problem. The purpose of the study: to determine the role of institutional trust in the connection of metavalues with the emigration attitude. Research hypothesis: institutional trust mediates the connection of meta-values (a) Conservation, (b) Openness to change, (c) Self-enhancement (d) Self-transcendence with the emigration attitude. The study was carried out on a sample (N = 646) aged 17 to 35 years, including 78% (504) women, using: PVQ-21 – ESS7 version of the questionnaire measuring individual values of Sh . Schwartz, Methods “Scale of migration attitudes” by S. A. Kuznetsova, I. Y. Kuznetsov, A. V. Feshchenko, modified into “Scale of emigration attitudes”; questionnaire “Level of institutional trust” and mediation analysis, through the use of the macro PROCESS to the IBM SPSS 26.0 program. It is established that institutional trust mediates the connection of the emigration attitude with the meta-values of Conservation, Openness to change and Self-enhancement, at the same time it is not a mediator in connection with the emigration attitude with the metavalue of Self-transcendence. The results of the study demonstrate the role of institutional trust in the emergence of an emigration attitude among young people, which allows them to be used to predict the emigration activity of young people, in psychological work with potential emigrants, as well as in the development of state youth policy programs.

Trust us, we know what we are doing: institutional trust in Croatia during the COVID-19 crisis

ABSTRACT Low levels of trust in institutions in a post-socialist context is a relatively well-documented finding across various disciplines. Building upon this, the paper adds new insights to this discussion by contextualizing institutional trust amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Croatia. Relying on the results from the national probabilistic sample, the authors explore how three sets of predictors – socio-demographic variables, individual characteristics (i.e., motivational orientations of authoritarianism and social dominance), and participants’ experiences during the coronavirus pandemic determine the level of trust in public institutions. Results unequivocally showcase a fairly weak relationship between authoritarianism and social dominance orientation with institutional trust, unlike situational experiences, which play the most significant role in explaining levels of institutional trust. Contrary to authors’ expectations, adherence to measures and worries about catching the COVID-19 disease in the future were not predictive for institutional trust.

Association between resilience, social support, and institutional trust and post-traumatic stress disorder after natural disasters

Disasters can cause significant personal and social distress and adversely affect mental health. Compared with research on the risk factors of post-disaster post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), limited studies have reported protective factors against PTSD. We investigated whether resilience, social support, and trust in government were associated with PTSD in disaster survivors, after adjustment for the perceived damage and demographic variables including sex, age, and economic status. We investigated 2311 disaster survivors, using data from the “Long-term survey on the change of life of Disaster victim” performed by NDMI(National Disaster Management Research Institute). Hierarchical regression analysis was used in this study. A high level of trust in institutions was associated with few PTSD symptoms after adjustment for resilience and social support. Among the subfactors of institutional trust, psychological counseling and environmental and facility restoration were associated with PTSD. Psychological counseling and environmental and facility restoration support for disaster survivors were associated with reduced PTSD symptoms. Post-disaster policy support, including psychological counseling and environmental and facility restoration services, is important. Our findings highlight the protective factors against PTSD symptoms and may serve as guidelines for specific interventions for the management of post-disaster PTSD.

Trust in Institutions as a Factor of Political Processes (Theoretical and Methodological Aspects)

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of existing approaches to the analysis of the impact of trust on political processes. The following tasks are solved: definitions of trust and approaches to its measurement are presented, theories related to the sphere of trust are considered, the context and the possible impact of trust on the political processes are described. Researchers link the origin of trust in institutions with their effectiveness. Party, ethnic or other affiliation are listed among the factors that determine trust. A high level of trust in institutions promotes reform, facilitates political stability, improves tax collection and reduces corruption, and increases support for the ruling party in multi-party systems.

Survey on Living, working and COVID19

Eurofound's e-survey, Living, working and COVID-19, provides a snapshot of the impact of the pandemic on people's lives. Two rounds of the survey were carried out in 2020, allowing for comparison between the situation in April 2020, when most Member States were in their first lockdown, and in July 2020, when society and economies were slowly re-opening. Eurofound completed a third round of the e-survey on 30 March 2021, as countries are still dealing with various levels of lockdown, while vaccine rollout programmes are underway. The findings of the e-survey in April 2020 reflected widespread emotional distress, financial concern and low levels of trust in institutions. Levels of concern abated somewhat in the July round, particularly among groups of respondents who were benefiting from support measures implemented during the pandemic. At the same time, the results underline stark differences between countries and between socioeconomic groups. Young people are emerging as some of lockdown's biggest losers who report the lowest levels of well-being in the 2020 rounds. Women also faced a disproportionate impact and remained less optimistic about their future than men - this gap widening further between April and July 2020. The survey results confirm the upsurge in teleworking across all countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, and show what this means for work-life balance and elements of job quality. Also in this respect the pandemic affected women more than men. In particular, the burden of care responsibilities increased during the pandemic for women. The third round of the survey will show whether life satisfaction, happiness and optimism, and trust in institutions have improved or deteriorated and whether inequalities continue to grow as the pandemic impacts differently on different groups. First insights from the European Working Conditions Survey - extraordinary edition 2021 will show how workers perceived their work situation in spring 2021.

Социальная активность и гражданская идентичность населения как важнейшие характеристики гражданского общества в современных сибирских регионах

The study of the status, factors and conditions of the civil society development in Russia is a relevant subject associated with the need to assess and forecast social development. The study aims at analysing the social and cultural determiners, formation mechanisms and interdependence of civil identity and the community’s social activity in the context of civil society establishment in Russian regions. The study included surveys in three Siberian border regions with different levels of social and economic development (Novosibirsk region, Altai Territory, Altai Republic). People of various ages (18—70, n = 1,418), as well as experts (n = 90) have been surveyed. The paper provides a comparative analysis of the social activity of different social and demographic groups and describes models of public participation of the community. The study considers the extent of the civic identity and the role of value orientation and social trust. The paper reveals the connection between social activity and solidarity indices, between the community’s social responsibility and citizenship, as well as social attitude, public development institutional conditions, and the level of institutional trust.

Political Participation in the Risk Society: The Italian Case

The risk society has profoundly changed our way of life. Among the social phenomena most affected by its effects is undoubtedly political participation and the degree of trust in institutions. This work aims, through the construction of two different indices, to answer the question “How does the risk society influence conventional participation and trust in institutions?”. The Indagine Multiscopo sulle famiglie and the Benessere Equo Sostenibile surveys provide a complete set of indicators to assess specific aspects of Italian daily life and well-being. This work uses a series of data from these surveys to analyze political participation and trust in institutions in Italy in 2019 at regional level using two composite indices obtained through the application of the MPI method. The result of this paper shows no particular effects of the risk society on conventional forms of political participation. Instead, the effects of the risk society are fully visible on levels of trust in institutions.

Are All Populist Voters the Same? Institutional Distrust and the Five Star Movement in Italy

ABSTRACT Are all populist voters the same? We focus on a valence populist party case (Five Star Movement) to answer this question. We inquire whether faithful populist voters, new populist voters, populist defectors and non-populist voters all have the same level of institutional trust. Our focus is on the Italian political system, regarded as a promised land for populism. This paradigmatic case sheds light on whether the entrance of a populist party into the system works as a corrective to democracy, as populist voters find their voice represented in parliament, potentially increasing their trust in the institutions. Our main finding is that faithful populist voters are the most distrustful category – meaning that having parliamentary representatives is not enough for populist voters to gain trust in institutions.

Trust levels within categories of information and communication technology companies.

The arguable claims of levels of trust in politics and business situations motivated this study, which investigates the degree of trust within micro, small, and medium categories of Hungarian Information and Communication Technology (ICT) companies. Different sizes of companies have varying interactions between internal members and their business partners. This study concentrated on exploring Hungarian ICT companies due to their significant role in supporting Industry 4.0. The study population are active Hungarian ICT companies. This research implemented random cluster selection related to the location of ICT firms. It exploited 100 samples, including micro, small, and medium-sized companies, and implemented discriminant analysis to examine the description and hypotheses. First, this study found that the level of trust in institutions within micro, small, and medium-sized companies varies significantly. The level of trust in institutions proliferates within corporations due to the capability of the formal institution to provide fair public services. This research additionally underlined that the performance of the Hungarian government would improve trust amongst the companies. Second, this study concluded that the level of interpersonal trust within three categories of companies was similar. A high level of interpersonal trust would expand internal engagement among the members of companies. Finally, the level of trust in business partners varied significantly within the distinct sizes of Hungarian ICT companies. A high level of trust in corporate associates improves business collaboration, reduces uncertainty, and supports long-term business connections. Levels of institutional trust and inter-organizational trust differed amongst different categories of companies. However, the level of interpersonal trust remained similar within companies of the various sizes.

Factors Influencing SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Acceptance and Hesitancy in a Population-Based Sample in Italy.

Vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 represents an effective and safe tool to protect the population against the disease; however, COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy could be a major barrier to achieving herd immunity. Despite the severity of the current pandemic, the population’s intention to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is still not clear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the intention to get vaccinated against COVID-19 among a convenience sample of the general population resident in Italy and the factors associated with hesitancy and acceptance of the vaccine in the context of the current pandemic before the rolling out of COVID-19 vaccines. An anonymous online survey was diffused among a general adult population living in Italy. Participants aged 18 or older and living in Italy were considered eligible. Incomplete questionnaires were excluded. Overall, 7605 valid questionnaires were collected. Most of the participants (81.9%) were inclined to get vaccinated; male sex (OR 1.38, 95% CI 1.12–1.71), a high level of trust in institutions (OR 3.93, 95% CI 2.04–7.83), and personal beliefs about high safety of COVID-19 vaccines (OR 56.33, 95% CI 31.57–105.87) were found to be among the significant predictors of COVID-19 acceptance. These data could help design larger studies to address the problem of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the current pandemic.

COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Is the New Terrain for Political Division among Americans

Politically conservative Americans are less likely than those who identify as liberal to report a willingness to get a vaccine against coronavirus disease 2019. Using data from the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Survey from November 2020 to February 2021, the authors find that this partisan divide in vaccine hesitancy has increased over time. Recent scholarship has suggested that these differences can be attributed to personal characteristics, including varying levels of trust in institutions. The authors find that although the data supported this hypothesis in mid-November, by early February differences in demographics, concern about the pandemic, and institutional trust no longer explained the partisan gap. The authors explain the deepening divide by turning to recent evidence that political party affiliation has become a source of identity that shapes personal decision making.

How Believing Climate Change is a “Hoax” Shapes Climate Skepticism in the United States

ABSTRACT Using data gathered from an online survey of residents of the geographic Pacific Northwest (N = 1000) who are skeptical of climate change, we examine the nuances of the belief that climate change constitutes a ‘hoax’. In doing so, we begin to fill an important ‘conspiracy gap’ in extant literature on climate skepticism. Results reveal that, among climate change skeptics, conspiracy adherents are more likely to be male, politically conservative, older, more religious, more educated, and have higher levels of income compared to non-conspiracists. Furthermore, conspiracy adherents and non-conspiracists vary in important ways in their levels of institutional trust, information sources, pro-environmental beliefs, and emotion-based responses to climate change. Recognizing these important differences among groups that constitute U.S. climate skeptics could potentially open up new avenues for climate change communication and policy.

What Is the Impact of Informal Entrepreneurship on Venture Capital Flows?

There has been a diverse range of research on the factors enabling informal entrepreneurship as well as the means to avoid or to eradicate its incidence. Several researchers argued that venture capital and financial flows, in general, contribute to economic growth and development. There have also been observations of how the investor level of trust in institutions facilitates investment decisions. This trust comes into play at the level of informal entrepreneurship and the ability of governments to control this type of entrepreneurship. Given that a great deal of research on this subject focuses its analysis on developing countries, we have chosen to investigate the reality of European countries precisely because of the scarcity of studies on the effect of informal entrepreneurship in this context. Our research aims to assess how informal entrepreneurship effects on venture capital flows. We use aggregated data at country level collected from a variety of sources, including the World Bank, Organization for Cooperation and Development and World Economic Forum, between 2006 and 2015 and 23 countries in Europe, corresponding to 230 observations (panel no. balanced). Through econometric estimation, which took place according to methodologies based on multiple regression models for panel data, the results demonstrate how informal entrepreneurship has a negative moderating effect between GDP and venture cUKapital flows. We intend to contribute to a better understanding of the effect of informal entrepreneurship on the flows of venture capital.