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Perceived Risk Crowds out Trust? Trust and Public Compliance with Coronavirus Restrictions over the Course of the Pandemic

Seyd, Ben (2022) Perceived Risk Crowds out Trust? Trust and Public Compliance with Coronavirus Restrictions over the Course of the Pandemic. European Political Science Review, . ISSN 1755-7739. (doi:10.1017/S1755773922000078) (KAR id:92059)

Abstract

Governments rely on citizen compliance for official rules to be effective. Yet achieving compliance is often tricky, particular when individual costs are high. Under what conditions will citizens voluntarily respect collective rules? We explore public compliance with SARS-CoV-2 (coronavirus) restrictions, focusing on the role of political trust. We anticipate that the effects of trust on compliance will be conditional on the presence of other factors, notably fear of infection. Low levels of fear may provide room for trust to shape compliance; yet high levels of fear may ‘crowd out’ the role of trust. We hypothesise that, at the pandemic’s outset, compliance was likely to be shaped more by fear than by trust. Yet as the pandemic progressed, the impact of fear on compliance was likely to have weakened, and the impact of trust to have strengthened. These hypotheses are tested using longitudinal data from Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1017/S1755773922000078
Uncontrolled keywords: Political trust; Risk; Compliance; Coronavirus
Subjects: J Political Science > JF Political institutions and public administration
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Politics and International Relations
Depositing User: Ben Seyd
Date Deposited: 05 Dec 2021 14:07 UTC
Last Modified: 31 Mar 2022 16:15 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/92059 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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