Valuation of Trust in Government: The Wellbeing Valuation Approach

Savinee Suriyanrattakorn and Chia-Lin Chang ()
Additional contact information
Savinee Suriyanrattakorn: Department of Applied Economics, National Chung Hsing University, South District, Taichung City 402204, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 19, 1-14

Abstract: Subjective wellbeing maximization is a possible goal of government or public policies, and it is often considered the goal of individual life. This paper proposes an estimation using the Wellbeing Valuation Approach (WVA) to estimate the monetized effect of trust in government. Using a cross-country panel data set for 97 countries in the period from 2011 to 2019, we arrive at three main findings. First, there is a positive relationship between trust in national government and average life satisfaction. Second, trust in the national government has a global median value of Intl$ 5649 per person a year in foregone income. Third, trust affects life satisfaction directly as well as indirectly through per capita GDP. This indirect effect is considered relatively small compared to the direct effect, being approximately six times smaller. This study contributes to the policy evaluation literature by providing an evaluation of trust in government to be used as a proxy to plan future investment or policy assessment.

Keywords: life satisfaction; trust in government; confidence in national government; subjective wellbeing; wellbeing valuation approach (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/11000/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/11000/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:19:p:11000-:d:649662

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().