Institutional Trust As a Determinant of Anxiety During the SARS Crisis in Hong Kong

Abstract

The SARS crisis of 2003 in Hong Kong generated widespread public fear and escalated the efforts of government and medical institutions for infection control. As such, the role of the government and medical institution in preventing public fear and anxiety became prominent. As hypothesized, trust in the institutions is especially relevant to public fear and anxiety during the epidemic crisis. For testing hypotheses involving the role of institutional trust, a telephone survey during the crisis in April 2003 and another telephone survey after the crisis in June 2003 drew data from 9,402 Hong Kong adults for analysis. Results indicate the significant negative effects of trust in the government and trust in the medical institution on anxiety. Supporting the aforementioned hypothesis the effect of institutional trust in the government was significantly more negative on anxiety during the crisis than its aftermath. Hence, the government and medical institution are particularly responsible for anxiety reduction during the crisis.

Combined and Relative Effect Levels of Perceived Risk, Knowledge, Optimism, Pessimism, and Social Trust on Anxiety among Inhabitants Concerning Living on Heavy Metal Contaminated Soil

“…When people sense a lack of personal control over hazards, they prefer to attend to only messages that come from sources they perceive as trustworthy. Trust has a significantly negative relationship with anxiety concerning hazards such as SARS crisis [15], food safety [8], and cancer [16]. These findings offer indirect evidences to support hypothesis concerning decreasing anxiety via social trust among inhabitants due to living on HMCS.…”

“…Column 1 of Table 1 shows that many studies aim at a wide variety of hazards, including living near incinerators or industrialized areas [1,2], facing virus infection [15,21], encountering daily hassles or fireworks disasters [14,24], and contracting different types of illnesses [16,20,23]. Despite the high number of studies on anxiety, Vandermoere [3] is the only one focusing on determinants of anxiety among inhabitants concerning living on HMCS.…”

Online government advisory service innovation through Intelligent Support Systems

“…Indeed, prior studies found that the public's self-assessment of being in control could insulate them from the adverse effect of stress and consequently enhance their commitment and trust to government [2]. Similarly, increase in the SoC may lead to constructive impact on the public's perception of the government agency as a service provider.…”

“…(2) If yes, what are the benefits? (3) Do the optimized explanation capabilities of ISS increase the benefits?…”

Ways that Social Change Predicts Personal Quality of Life

“…Accordingly, economic and technological development engenders side effects that contaminate physical and social environments and squeeze work and family life (Adams 2007). A specific social change in Hong Kong since 2003 is the heightening of public fear and concern about epidemics and distrust of government in maintaining health and social security, as ignited by the outbreak of the severely acute respiratory syndrome (Cheung and Tse 2008;Wong 2007). Such a change about fear and distrust is likely to characterize poorer societal quality of life and personal quality of life.…”