Disentangling the Causal Structure Between Social Trust, Institutional Trust, and Subjective Well-Being

Abstract

Previous research indicates a positive relation between social trust, institutional trust and subjective well-being. Besides theoretical assumptions and cross-sectional relations, only few studies so far examined the causal structure between these concepts. However, previous studies showed contradictory results, possibly due to different methods and datasets used. Hence, we analyzed the causal structure between the three concepts on the aggregate country-level using the European Social Survey, which offers a total of 217 observations from 30 countries, nested in nine time-points between 2002 and 2018. We targeted a causal effect by using a multilevel bivariate cross-lagged analysis. This way we analyzed if previous values of the respective explanatory variable predicts future values of the respective criterion variable. Using this method, we were able to (1) separate the relevant within-country from the between-countries effect, (2) control for different effects in different countries, (3) control for covariates as well as for autoregression of the respective criterion variable over time, and (4) control for residual correlation between the respective criterion variables. Our results suggest a causal effect from subjective well-being to social trust, but little evidence for a reverse causal pathway. Further, we found no effect from social trust and subjective well-being on institutional trust and only small but negative effects vice versa. The results suggest treating social and institutional trust not as preconditions of subjective well-being, but rather as independent facets for the quality of life of a society as already implemented by the OECD’s better-life index, amongst others.

Scientific literature review on measuring institutional trust in the domain of food regulation, food safety and public health nutrition

“…2020) demonstrate that perceptions of strong economic performance are a strong driver of trust in institutions. Glatz and Schwerdtfeger (2022) explore economic crisis as a barrier to trust; the data suggests that EU countries, including Latvia, Greece, Spain, Croatia and Portugal, that were more impacted by the economic crisis experienced a reduction in institutional trust. At the same time, countries which were less impacted by the economic crisis, including Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Germany, experienced no change in institutional trust or in some cases an increase.…”

“…quality (Kaasa and Andriani 2022). Prior evidence suggests that trust grows when institutions act within certain standards and norms, are reliable and fair, and offer opportunities for public participation (Glatz and Schwerdtfeger 2022).…”

“…Most studies (n=47) had a sample of more than 450 respondents. The largest sample was used by Glatz and Schwerdtfeger (2022) in their analysis of the European Social Survey (ESS) in 36 countries (N=390,000). Five further studies also used the ESS as their primary data source.…”