Trust in Institutions, Not in Political Leaders, Determines Covid-19 Public Health Compliance in Societies across the Globe

Abstract

A core assumption often heard in public health discourse is that increasing trust in national political leaders is essential for securing public health compliance during crises like the Covid-19 pandemic (2019-ongoing). However, studies of national government trust typically are too coarse-grained to differentiate between the trust in institutions versus more interpersonal trust in political leaders. Here, we present multiscale trust measurements for twelve countries and territories across the West, Oceania and East Asia. These trust results are used to identify which specific domains of government and social trust were most crucial for securing public health compliance (frequency of mask wearing and social distancing), and understanding the reasons for following the health measures (belief in effectiveness of public health measures). Our cross-cultural survey-based analysis (12 countries/territories, N=3369 subjects) reveals that higher trust in national and local public health institutions were a universally consistent predictor of public health compliance, while trust in national political leaders was actually not predictive of compliance across cultures and geographical regions. Institutional trust was mediated by multiple types of transparency, including providing rationale, securing public feedback, and honestly expressing uncertainty. These measures of transparency in public health communications, in turn, influence the public’s compliance behavior and beliefs. In total, these results highlight the importance of distinguishing between components of government trust, to better understand which entities the public give the most attention to during crises. Our findings may contribute to better planning and improvement of society-level cooperation, especially under highly uncertain disaster contexts.

Thematic analysis of national online narratives on regular asymptomatic testing in schools in the United Kingdom

“…Our analysis also identi ed that for some, there was the belief that the schools testing policy was being used by the Government and media as a tool for controlling public behaviour through maintaining fear about COVID-19. Mistrust in government has been identi ed previously as a barrier to engaging in regular testing [14,15] as well as other protective behaviours [31,32]. Enhancing trust and legitimacy of government actions through open and honest communication has been shown to increase adherence to public health measures [33], therefore communicating openly about the schools testing policy, such as why it was introduced and how it will help reduce COVID-19 transmission may improve public support.…”

“…However, our research does have some limitations. First, the demographic of social media users is different from the general population [35] and previous research has identi ed people who use social media have lower trust in government [32]. In addition, demographic characteristics vary depending on which social media platform is used [17].…”