Research

This study shows that social and political trust may diverge in the face of shared threats, and that this pattern is driven by negative information about crisis management. Leveraging a three-wave panel survey and an information-provision experiment in the USA during the COVID-19 crisis, our research reveals that negative perceptions of pandemic management lead to a decline in political trust and a parallel increase in social trust. This dynamic is pronounced among government supporters, who, confronted with COVID-19 challenges, experience a substantial erosion of political trust. Simultaneously, there is a notable rise in social trust within this group. Our analysis suggests that, as government supporters attributed more responsibility for the crisis to their political leader, political trust was supplanted by social trust. Disenchanted voters, feeling let down by institutions, sought support in society. Both the survey and the experiment underscore that societal shocks can prompt individuals to shift from relying on formal institutions to informal ones as a coping strategy. This research contributes a generalizable framework explaining how negative perceptions of crisis management can lead societies to substitute political trust with social trust, advancing our understanding of societal responses to shared threats and adaptive strategies during crises.

Despite growing awareness of climate change, individual action remains limited. We conducted two pre-registered experiments (one online with a representative sample, one in the laboratory with incentivized tasks) to examine whether framing climate risks as natural disasters – i.e., an immediate, unpredictable threat – or climate migration – i.e., a distant, gradual threat – in one's own country fosters pro-environmental behavior, also identifying mechanisms behind the persistent intention–action gap. Exposure to nature risks increased personal normative beliefs, concern, and donations to environmental causes, but did not promote cooperation in settings prone to free-riding. Hormonal data revealed a defensive 'flight' response, suggesting risk avoidance in strategic contexts. Altruism emerged in non-competitive settings, but collective action remained limited by fear that others would not cooperate, prompting individuals to delegate responsibility to institutions. This tendency was especially pronounced among participants with high institutional trust, who, after exposure to climate risks, lowered their contributions and expectations in strategic settings, while increasing donations in non-strategic contexts.

One of the advantages of multi-level government is that it can bring policies closer to voters, thereby strengthening accountability. Yet the same institutional complexity may also reduce transparency and weaken accountability when citizens struggle to identify which level of government is responsible for public services. We conduct a survey experiment with a nationally representative sample of 5,000 Italian citizens to study how responsibility for public services is attributed, how often these attributions diverge from institutional responsibility, and how they shape evaluations of service quality. We find widespread misattribution of responsibility across local, regional, and central government. A subset of respondents is then provided with correct information about which level of government is institutionally responsible. When this feedback shifts perceived responsibility toward a politically aligned level of government, respondents report higher service quality. Among those who answered correctly, receiving confirmation also increases perceived quality, especially when the responsible government is politically aligned. Overall, limited information about institutional responsibility distorts performance evaluations in multi-level governance systems, while information about responsibility affects service quality assessments in ways that depend on prior political attachments.