Do Long-Term Natural Disasters Influence Social Trust? Empirical Evidence from China

Yao Li, Haoyang Li and Jianqing Ruan
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Haoyang Li: Institute for Advanced Research, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China
Jianqing Ruan: China Academy for Rural Development, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 14, 1-11

Abstract: The natural environment is one of the most critical factors that profoundly influences human races. Natural disasters may have enormous effects on individual psychological characteristics. Using China’s long-term historical natural disaster dataset from 1470 to 2000 and data from a household survey in 2012, we explore whether long-term natural disasters affect social trust. We find that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between long-term natural disaster frequency and social trust. We further examine the impact of long-term natural disaster frequency on social trust in specific groups of people. Social trust in neighbors and doctors is stronger where long-term natural disasters are more frequent. Our results are robust after we considering the geographical difference. The effect of long-term natural disasters remains positively significant after we divide the samples based on geographical location. Interestingly, the impact of long-term flood frequency is only significant in the South and the impact of long-term drought frequency is only significant in the North.

Keywords: long-term natural disasters; social trust; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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