Trust in the Time of Corona

Tilman Brück, Neil Ferguson, Patricia Justino and Wolfgang Stojetz ()
Additional contact information
Wolfgang Stojetz: ISDC - International Security and Development Center

No 13386, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The global spread of COVID-19 is one of the largest threats to people and governments since the Second World War. The on-going pandemic and its countermeasures have led to varying physical, psychological, and emotional experiences, shaping not just public health and the economy but also societies. We focus on one pillar of society—trust—and explore how trust correlates with the individual experiences of the pandemic. The analysis is based on a new global survey—'Life with Corona'—and uses simple correlational statistics. We show that those who have had contact with sick people and those that are unemployed exhibit lower trust in people, institutions, and in general. By contrast, no such differences exist for those who have personally experienced symptoms of the disease. These associations vary across contexts and are not driven by concerns about personal health or the health of loved ones, but rather by increased levels of worry and stress. Our findings suggest that the effects of the pandemic go well beyond immediate health concerns, leading to important normative changes that are likely to shape how societies will emerge from the pandemic

Keywords: COVID-19; coronavirus; pandemic; survey data; trust; well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 I12 I31 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2020-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp13386.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Trust in the time of corona (2020)
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:iza:izadps:dp13386

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().