Public trust in the Chinese government and life satisfaction during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523231161297 |
| Author | Qimeng Cai |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Public trust in the Chinese
government and life
satisfaction during the
early stages of the
COVID-19 pandemic
Qimeng Cai
School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan
University, China
Abstract
It is important to understand the public’s trust in the government’s ability to handle crisis
events. Based on China Family Panel Studies data in 2018 and 2020, this paper explores
the interaction between government trust and life satisfaction during the pandemic. It is
found that with the increase in public trust in government officials, individual life satis-
faction has been significantly improved. The main mechanism is that government trust
enhances people’s confidence in the future and promotes the government’s investment
in the livelihood fields. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, individual life satisfac-
tion suffered a negative impact. Individuals with high trust in the government before the
pandemic had a small decrease in life satisfaction. At the same time, when faced with the
pandemic, individuals were more willing to trust the government due to the desire to
overcome common threats, which will alleviate the negative impact of the pandemic
on individual life satisfaction. The research reported in this paper helps to explain the
role of government in the crisis period from the perspective of public trust and provides
useful information for the government to formulate and adjust policies to mitigate the
impact of the crisis events.
Points for practitioners
•In China, trust in local governments is related to public satisfaction.
•People are more willing to increase trust in the government to overcome a common
crisis, thus reducing the negative impact of the crisis on individual life satisfaction.
Corresponding author:
Qimeng Cai, School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, No. 220 Handan Road,
Yangpu District, Shanghai 200082, China.
Email: caiqmcc@163.com
Article
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
2023, Vol. 89(4) 1165–1185
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00208523231161297
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
•Perhaps more important is to promote the public service motivation of government
officials through government trust.
•Providing public services, increasing accountability and transparency in society, and
increasing citizen engagement are all effective ways to foster institutional trust.
Keywords
Crisis event, life satisfaction, political trust, urban governance
Introduction
The relationship between political systems and citizens is one of the most important rela-
tionships in modern society. Citizens’evaluation of the current political system, espe-
cially the level of trust or support, is key to the strength of the relationship (Zhang and
Ip, 2019). Institutional trust is an important aspect of the relationship between citizens
and institutions, and most previous studies have explored the role of institutional trust
in advanced industrialized western countries (Goldfinch et al., 2022; Hudson, 2006).
In contrast to advanced industrialized western countries, the progression of institutional
trust in post-communist countries is a distinct circumstance. For example, Habibov et al.
(2019) point out that the transformation from centrally planned to market economies is
accompanied by increases in poverty and inequality, and the decline of the quality and
efficiency of public services. With this background in mind, this paper examines the
role of institutional trust in China.
Improving people’s life satisfaction is the main goal of social development. As one of
the largest global crises faced by countries in recent years, COVID-19 not only caused
major medical and economic problems but also led to a decline in people’s life satisfac-
tion (Zacher and Rudolph, 2021). The suddenness and uncertainty of crisis events will
directly or indirectly affect the psychological state of individuals, and the public will
have negative emotions such as fear and anxiety, which cause trust turbulence (Qiu
et al., 2020).
Trust is an important resource to mitigate the impact of a crisis (Habibov and Afandi,
2015). Existing research has confirmed that government trust is an important factor in
changing individual life satisfaction (Ciziceno and Travaglino, 2019). It is very important
to understand people’s trust in the government’s ability to deal with emergencies, which
is helpful to predict people’s cooperation with government policies and changes in their
personal subjective feelings during crises (McComas and Trumbo, 2001). Therefore, the
purpose of this paper is to examine the interaction between public trust in government and
individual life satisfaction during crisis events.
Previous research confirms the important role of institutional trust in explaining life
satisfaction. However, despite the strong theoretical basis for the positive impact of insti-
tutional trust on life satisfaction, few studies have analysed the interaction between insti-
tutional trust and life satisfaction during crisis events. This paper attempts to answer the
following questions. First, how does an individual’s trust in the government affect life
1166 International Review of Administrative Sciences 89(4)
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