Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2018, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (5): 158-181.

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Natural Disaster and Political Trust: A Natural Experiment Study of the Impact of Wenchuan Earthquake

YOU Yu1, HUANG Yifan2, ZHUANG Yuyi3   

  1. 1. School of Public Administration, Chongqing University;
    2. Department of Government and Public Administration, The Chinese University of Hong Kong;
    3. School of Public Affairs, Xiamen University
  • Online:2018-09-20 Published:2018-09-20
  • Supported by:

    This study is supported by the Chongqing Social Science Planning Fund Program (2017BS11),and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities,China (0220/ZK1050).

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Abstract:

How do natural disasters impact political trust in contemporary China and what is the causal mechanism? Existing literature indicates that severity of disaster,government relief effort and information dissemination are the three key factors influencing people's political trust in the context of acute natural disasters. This study uses Wenchuan Earthquake as a natural experiment and focuses specifically the survey data collected right before and after the quake. It finds that largely due to the “rally round the flag” effect and massive media coverage,political trust of government officials at all levels rises significantly post-disaster. During the crisis,state-owned and -controlled media played a vital intermediate role. The more a citizen is exposed to the official media coverage,the more likely his/her political trust spikes. However,the division of work in disaster relief among different levels of government results in different degree of trust increase. As county-level governments are often directly responsible for rescue and post-earthquake relief,they gain the highest increase of political trust while central-level officials the smallest. The short-run jump of political trust recedes as time goes by. Government mobilization and media coverage are important contributing factors to the political trust spike in post-disaster time. Nevertheless,the key to consolidate political legitimacy lies in long term effort to build good and effective governance.

Key words: natural disaster, political trust, Wenchuan Earthquake, political communication