Revitalization of Trust in Local Government after Wenchuan Earthquake: Constraints and Strategies

Zhichao Li and Xihan Tan
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Zhichao Li: School of Political Science and Public Administration, East China University of Political Science and Law, Shanghai 201620, China
Xihan Tan: School of Public Administration, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China

Sustainability, 2018, vol. 10, issue 11, 1-19

Abstract: Government trust is an important manifestation of the legitimacy of government, which can reduce the cost of recovery policy implementation and improve the efficiency of reconstruction after natural hazards. Local government is the main force of post-disaster reconstruction in China. The villagers’ trust in local government plays an important role in post-disaster reconstruction. Therefore, enhancing the villagers’ trust in local government will greatly benefit the resilience of post-disaster reconstruction and the sustainable development of the disaster area. Through analyzing the data collected from a three-year (2009–2012) follow-up survey in Wenchuan after it was struck by an earthquake, we found that villagers’ trust toward the local government witnessed a significant decline. Low fairness in policy implementation, dense networks, and particularistic trust were the constraints that hindered the revitalization of trust in the local government. However, the economic improvement had no impact on the “trust in local government”. These results suggest that post-disaster recovery should involve more than the reconstruction of the economic performance, such as the fairness of policy implementation and the relief of negative effects of villagers’ social networks. Only when considering all of these factors will the sustainability of trust in local government be promoted and the reconstruction efficiency be enhanced in the process of disaster recovery.

Keywords: revitalization of trust in local government; Wenchuan earthquake; post-disaster recovery; social network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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