Economic performance, income inequality and political trust: new evidence from a cross-national study of 14 Asian countries

Abstract

Political trust is a fundamental bedrock for a political system to work. The "trust-asevaluation" approach has identified an individual's perceived evaluation of economic performance and income inequality as critical determinants of political trust. Another stream of research has argued that macro-level factors, measured by macroeconomic indicators or GINI index, are correlated with political trust. To date, only a few empirical studies have questioned how macro-level performance interacts with those at the micro-level, namely, individuals' subjective evaluations. Existing empirical studies mainly focus on Europe with little attention to Asia. To fill a gap in the literature, we extend the "trust-as-evaluation approach" to the Asian context, employing a multilevel analysis using the Asian Barometer Survey's fourth wave. This study identifies that: (i) an individual's perception of their economic well-being or inequality is the critical determinant of political trust; (ii) macro-level economic performance has an unclear and mixed effect on political trust; and (iii) instead, macro-level income inequality functions as a moderator between the relationship between perceived income inequality and political trust.

Cultural psychology of inequality: Current and future directions

“…It is therefore not surprising that Chinese and Koreans endorsed the redistribution of wealth to a greater degree than Taiwanese and Japanese. In other words, Chinese and Koreans want their governments to do more to reduce inequality than Taiwanese and Japanese (see, however, Chi & Kwon, 2016; Kim et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2020, 2021 for higher levels of perceived inequality among Taiwanese).…”

“…In a similar vein, large‐scale cross‐national surveys conducted between 2014 and 2016 across 14 different Asian countries directly measured a sense of fairness in income distribution (“How fair do you think income distribution is in your country?”). Findings showed that people in Myanmar, Taiwan, Mongolia, and Korea perceived a relatively high level of unfairness in income distribution ( M s = 1.93–2.11 on a 1–4 scale, lower scores indicating low levels of fairness perceived in income distribution), while people in Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia perceived a relatively low level of unfairness in income distribution ( M s = 2.53–2.63; Lee et al., 2020, 2021). Individuals' perceptions did not always match the objective level of inequality in their country; in fact, GINI coefficients were positively correlated with perceived fairness ( r = .19), suggesting that people in more unequal societies perceived their country's income distribution to be fairer.…”

Perceived Income Inequality, Trust, and Consumers’ Ethical Judgments

“…For example, recent research shows that high levels of inequality in employee pay within organizations leads to lower levels of employee trust in managers (Schulz, Valizade, and Charlwood 2022). There has also been limited research on the relationship between income inequality and political trust (Lee, Chang, and Hur 2020; Zmerli and Castillo 2015), with the consistent finding that these are negatively correlated. Lipps and Schraff (2021) found that income inequality is negatively related to institutional trust among citizens (e.g., trust in national governments and supranational institutions such as the European Union).…”

Changing fortunes and attitudes: what determines the political trust in modern Russia?

“…Political trust, being one of the types of trust, includes both people's trust in political organisations (institutional political trust) and their trust in specific government officials (interpersonal political trust). Lee et al (2020) distinguish two approaches to political trust. According to the first approach, political trust is an assessment of how well the government performs its functions and how the political system responds to the needs of the people.…”

“…According to the second approach, outlined by Lee et al (2020), political trust depends on social inequality. This approach also assumes two levels of analysis: the macro-level, when a generalised indicator of inequality, such as the Gini or Theil coefficient, is used to make cross-country or cross-time comparisons, and the micro-level, where the position of an individual in the income hierarchy is viewed as a factor of political trust.…”