15:30 - 17:45
Thursday-Panel
Chair/s:
William L Allen
Discussant/s:
Dominik Schraff
Meeting Room I

Dominik Schraff, Sven Hegewald
Ethnic diversity and political trust during the Covid-19 pandemic

William Allen, Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij
Winning the Battle or Worst of the Bunch? How COVID-19 Mortality Data Impacts Perceptions of Government Performance and Health Attitudes

Daniel Devine, Hannah Willis, Will Jennings, Gerry Stoker, Lawrence McKay, Jennifer Gaskell, Viktor Valgardsson
The causes of trust in government: evidence from conjoint experiments

Jakob-Moritz Eberl, Robert Huber, Esther Greussing
From Populism to the ‘Plandemic’: Why populists believe in COVID-19 conspiracies

Constanza Sanhueza
Severity, economic relief or transparency? Experimental evidence on support of and compliance with Covid-19 prevention measures across Europe
The causes of trust in government: evidence from conjoint experiments
Daniel Devine 1, Hannah Willis 2, Will Jennings 2, Gerry Stoker 2, Lawrence McKay 2, Jennifer Gaskell 2, Viktor Valgardsson 2
1 St Hilda's College, University of Oxford
2 University of Southampton

Trust in political institutions is a core concept in political science and, increasingly, public and elite conversation. Whilst there has been decades of research, the causes of trust are still 'protean' and with little concensus over the most important factors (Citrin and Stoker, 2018). We argue that a part of this is due to the overwhelming reliance on survey research in political trust research, combined with a disparate theoretical approach. To address this, this paper presents results from approximately five nationally-representative conjoint experiments in three countries (the UK (x3), US, and Italy) drawing on a parsimonious theoretical framework which encompasses existing empirical work. Results show that the majority of respondents want the same thing from government: a lack of corruption, competence, and one that works in one's interests. Government features, such as ideology and approval rating, also play a role, with governments at the extreme ends of the ideological spectrum less trusted. We show that there are few heterogenous effects across respondents, indicating that most people want the same objective factors. This suggests that trust research should focus less on the link between objective factors, such as corruption and performance, and more on the individual qualities that link these factors to trust judgements.