Re-evaluating Political Trust: The Impact of Survey Nonresponse in Rural China

Abstract

Has survey nonresponse caused scholars to overestimate political trust in China? We analyse item nonresponse for sensitive questions on trust in government from our original survey of villagers conducted in China in 2012. We also analyse nonresponse in four other comparable surveys conducted in China between 1993 and 2014. We examine the association between nonresponse to politically sensitive questions and individual characteristics such as sex, level of education, Party membership and cosmopolitanism. We find that less privileged groups may be underrepresented in survey data generally. We find mixed results regarding the association between cosmopolitanism and nonresponse. We conclude that our understanding of political trust in China has been compromised by high rates of item nonresponse, leading to artificially high estimates of trust in the centre and exaggerated accounts of the gap between trust in central and local leaders.

Local Awareness and Interpretations of Species Extinction in a Rural Chinese Biodiversity Hotspot

“…Consistent with similar studies conducted in this region (Nash et al, 2016;, our sample was biased toward men and people with lower levels of education, possibly because men can have a higher willingness to interact with strangers in rural China, and might be more likely to agree to be interviewed compared to women (Ratigan and Rabin, 2020). The villages we surveyed represent some of the poorest and underdeveloped communities in Hainan (and indeed across China), which is why overall education levels are low amongst interviewees (Davies and Wismer, 2007;Gu and Wall, 2007), and people who attain higher education from such communities in China tend to migrate to urban areas to seek better employment opportunities (Gu and Wall, 2007).…”

“…Researchers' positions as independent from government authorities were clearly explained to interviewees, emphasizing that they were students wanting to learn about the local environment. Researchers were not accompanied by local officials because this has been known to affect responses (Davies and Wismer, 2007;Ratigan and Rabin, 2020). Standard Mandarin was used in all interviews, which the interviewees could understand.…”

Rage or rationality: Exposure to Internet censorship and the impact on individual information behaviors in China

“…This incident left us to rethink the ethical and methodological issues of conducting Internet user research in an informational autarchy. Nonresponse is still a common issue concerning politically sensitive surveys in China (Ratigan & Rabin, 2020). Nonresponses may complicate inference from survey research, where bias arises from demographic factors like education and political background; for instance, 18% of respondents in our study chose not to report their partisan affiliations.…”

The Long-Term Impact of Mobilization and Repression on Political Trust

“…The evidence for self-censorship in Chinese public opinion surveys is mixed; while several studies have found evidence for self-censorship in measures of political support, others cast doubt on the prevalence of political wariness. Some studies have found that Chinese respondents are likely to overstate their support for the government (Robinson and Tannenberg, 2019; Shen and Truex, 2020), and their trust in the central government (Ratigan and Rabin, 2020). Others argue that political sensitivity is unlikely to be severe enough to inflate measures of trust.…”