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Trust and the coronavirus pandemic: What are the consequences of and for trust? An early review of the literature

Trust and the coronavirus pandemic: What are the consequences of and for trust? An early review of the literature
Trust and the coronavirus pandemic: What are the consequences of and for trust? An early review of the literature

Trust between governors and the governed is seen as essential to facilitating good governance. This claim has become a prominent contention during the coronavirus pandemic. The crisis also presents a unique test of key hypotheses in the trust literature. Moreover, understanding the dynamics of trust, how it facilitates and hinders policy responses, and also the likely effects of these responses on trust are going to be fundamental questions in policy and trust research in the future. In this article, we review the early literature on the coronavirus pandemic and political and social trust, summarise their findings and highlight key challenges for future research. We show how the studies shed light on trust’s association with implementation of government measures, public compliance with them, mortality rates and the effect of government action on levels of trust. We also urge caution given the varying ways of measuring trust and operationalising the impact of the pandemic, the existence of common issues with quantitative studies and the relatively limited geographical scope of studies to date. We argue that it is going to be important to have a holistic understanding of these dynamics, using mixed-methods research as well as the quantitative studies we review here.

COVID-19, coronavirus, political trust, review, social trust
1-12
Devine, Daniel
3c3c97c2-6d6a-4969-8cef-7cd1c2609d57
Gaskell, Jennifer
9653ac56-1d66-4d76-93dc-8064edbe5f99
Jennings, William
2ab3f11c-eb7f-44c6-9ef2-3180c1a954f7
Stoker, Gerard
209ba619-6a65-4bc1-9235-cba0d826bfd9
Devine, Daniel
3c3c97c2-6d6a-4969-8cef-7cd1c2609d57
Gaskell, Jennifer
9653ac56-1d66-4d76-93dc-8064edbe5f99
Jennings, William
2ab3f11c-eb7f-44c6-9ef2-3180c1a954f7
Stoker, Gerard
209ba619-6a65-4bc1-9235-cba0d826bfd9

Devine, Daniel, Gaskell, Jennifer, Jennings, William and Stoker, Gerard (2020) Trust and the coronavirus pandemic: What are the consequences of and for trust? An early review of the literature. Political Studies Review, 19 (2), 1-12. (doi:10.1177/1478929920948684).

Record type: Review

Abstract

Trust between governors and the governed is seen as essential to facilitating good governance. This claim has become a prominent contention during the coronavirus pandemic. The crisis also presents a unique test of key hypotheses in the trust literature. Moreover, understanding the dynamics of trust, how it facilitates and hinders policy responses, and also the likely effects of these responses on trust are going to be fundamental questions in policy and trust research in the future. In this article, we review the early literature on the coronavirus pandemic and political and social trust, summarise their findings and highlight key challenges for future research. We show how the studies shed light on trust’s association with implementation of government measures, public compliance with them, mortality rates and the effect of government action on levels of trust. We also urge caution given the varying ways of measuring trust and operationalising the impact of the pandemic, the existence of common issues with quantitative studies and the relatively limited geographical scope of studies to date. We argue that it is going to be important to have a holistic understanding of these dynamics, using mixed-methods research as well as the quantitative studies we review here.

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Trust and the Coronavirus Pandemic PSR Preprint - Accepted Manuscript
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 20 July 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 11 August 2020
Additional Information: Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2020.
Keywords: COVID-19, coronavirus, political trust, review, social trust

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 442613
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/442613
PURE UUID: 45fd2315-b304-4eb0-a089-d3654a6e9bb9
ORCID for Jennifer Gaskell: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-1702-6234
ORCID for William Jennings: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9007-8896
ORCID for Gerard Stoker: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8172-3395

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 21 Jul 2020 16:32
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:52

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Contributors

Author: Daniel Devine
Author: Gerard Stoker ORCID iD

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