ABSTRACT
Life satisfaction (LS) has received widespread attention, but few studies explored the determinants of people’s LS in China from the perspective of perceived performance of local government (PPLG). Therefore, taking trust in local government and political participation into consideration, this study employed the data in 2021CSS to analyse the relationship between PPLG and LS. The results showed that PPLG had a direct positive relationship with people’s LS. Citizens’ trust in local government played a mediating role in this relationship. That is, PPLG had a significant positive association with citizens’ trust in local government, which in turn had a significant positive relationship with people’s LS. Unexpectedly, institutional and non- institutional political participation played different roles, namely, institutional political participation rather than non-institutional political participation played a mediating role in this model. The conclusions provided a meaningful supplement for related studies, but some potential limitations require further discussion.
Acknowledgments
Data used were from Chinese Social Survey (CSS) in this research, originally collected by Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The author (s) appreciates the assistance in providing data of 2021CSS.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Data availability statement
The raw data that support the findings of this study are openly available in official website of Chinese Social Quality Data Archive at http://csqr.cass.cn/DataExplore/, reference number 2021CSS. And data in this study can be obtained by connecting with the corresponding author.
Supplementary material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03003930.2024.2352504
Ethical approval
This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by the author.
Notes
1. China’s State Council Information Office. ‘Poverty Alleviation: China’s Experience and Contribution’ (2021). Arrived at https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2021–04/06/content_5597952.htm
2. The Government of the People’s Republic of China. ‘Constitution of People’s Republic of China’ (2018), Arrived at https://www.gov.cn/guoqing/2018–03/22/content_5276318.htm
3. OECD (2022). Building Trust to Reinforce Democracy: Key Findings from the 2021 OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions. Arrived at https://www.oecd.org/governance/trust-in-government/