A Matter of Trust: How Political and Social Trust Relate to the Acceptance of Covid-19 Policies in Germany

ABSTRACT

In Germany, the federal and Länder governments have been implementing policies in order to contain the spread of Covid-19 since March 2020. This article examines the effects of political and social trust on the acceptance of these policies. The latter is, in turn, a prerequisite for compliance with public policy. In a multi-level regression analysis based on two waves of survey data collected in May and November 2020, we find that trust relates to the acceptance of anti-pandemic measures. Political trust, i.e. trust in political actors and institutions has a positive effect on acceptance. Social trust, meaning the trust in other citizens is found to reduce acceptance of measures like contact restrictions. In addition, ideological positions influence the effects of both trust variables. The impact of political trust on acceptance increases with increasingly liberal positions in both survey waves, since individuals with these positions might generally be more wary of state interference. We also found an interaction between social trust and ideology during the second wave: the further respondents are on the political right, the more the negative effect of social trust on acceptance is enhanced, as these individuals might favour individualism and self-reliance in general.

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Correction

Data Accessibility

Replication data and Stata-Do-Files available at Harvard Dataverse. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/W5CESW.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09644008.2022.2104429)

Notes

1 In wave 1, the number of voters of other parties is also higher than expected. This mainly concerns persons identifying with the anti-Corona movement “Widerstand 2020”.

2 See Saris et al. 2010 for the limits of agree/disagree rating scales like this.

3 Since this question is the standard indicator of social trust in survey research, we use it even though this indicator is not without controversy. Scholars have pointed out that it is not clear enough to respondents who comprises ‘most people’ (Glaeser et al. 2000). As a result, many respondents think of people they know when answering this question (Bauer and Freitag 2018).

4 The wording of the individual indicators is as follows:

- Society should take a tough stance against people who do not work.

- Troublemakers should get the clear message that they are not wanted in society.

- Social rules should be enforced without mercy.

- People should leave important decisions in society to leaders.

- We should be grateful for leaders who tell us exactly what to do.

5 https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Fallzahlen.html

6 See table O3 and O4 in the Online Appendix for the results of bivariate regressions of all other individual level variables.

7 The results do not change if instead of the MLE estimation with robust standard errors, the Restricted Maximum Likelihood (REML) procedure is used. See Table O5 in the Online Appendix.

8 Alternative models using the current income situation instead of income loss also give significant results (the higher the income, the higher the acceptance). When controlling for both, current income and income loss, only the latter remains significant (see Table O6 in the Online Appendix).

9 These results are robust to changes in the operationalisation of the variables to 14/30 days before the survey or to all infections/deaths since January 2020, as well as using the logarithm of the distance to hotspots instead of the simple distance. See Table O7 in the Online Appendix.

10 Standardised coefficients (β) were estimated according to the suggestion by Hox (2010, 22). See Table O8 in the Online Appendix for all standardised coefficients.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sebastian Jäckle

Sebastian Jäckle is a Researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg, Germany. His work centres on a variety of political science topics such as political elites, political sociology, right wing terrorism, appearance effects in elections, geographical analyses and attitudes in transnational comparison. In his studies he applies primarily quantitative methods. Recent work has appeared in European Sociological Review, West European Politics, Journal of European Public Policy, and Swiss Political Science Review. More recently he has also published on the carbon footprint of academic conferences in European Political Science and PS: Political Science and Politics.

Eva-Maria Trüdinger

Eva-Maria Trüdinger is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences, University of Stuttgart. Her research focuses on questions of political sociology, political psychology, and survey methodology, with a particular interest in public opinion about policies, civil liberties, political tolerance, and political trust. Recent work has appeared, among others, in Political Research Quarterly and the European Journal of Public Policy.

Achim Hildebrandt

Achim Hildebrandt is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences, University of Stuttgart. His research focuses on comparative public policy, public opinion about policies and federalism. Recent work has appeared in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Political Research Quarterly and European Journal of Public Policy.

Uwe Wagschal

Uwe Wagschal is Professor for Policical Science, University of Freiburg, Germany. His work focuses on public policy research, especially the determinants of public debt, public expenditure and taxation. Besides that, he published several books and articles on direct democracy and federalism. He is editor of the Journal Statistics, Politics and Policy. Recent work was on the real-time analysis of public debates, with a new debat-o-meter.