Parsons, Samantha; Wiggins, Richard D; (2022) Trust in government, trust in others during and compliance with social distancing: findings from the CLS COVID-19 web survey across four National Longitudinal Studies. (CLS Working Papers 2022/9). UCL, Centre for Longitudinal Studies: London, UK.

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Abstract

This paper focuses on the changes in self-reported trust in government, others and compliance with social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic for a subgroup of 9137 individuals who provided evaluations on three consecutive waves of a web survey (May 2020, September 2020 and February 2021). Sample members belong to four national longitudinal studies, covering ‘baby boomers’ (sixty-something’s), ‘Generation X’ (fifty-something’s), ‘Millennials’ (thirty-somethings) and ‘Generation Z’ (twenty-somethings). During the early days of the first lockdown (May 2020) members of the two older generations reported the highest levels of trust in government in contrast to their younger counterparts. This disparity between the generations held over time and whilst the tendency amongst all age groups was towards lower levels of trust a notable minority of respondents hardly changed their evaluations at all and, some cases reported higher levels of trust. At the outset of the pandemic older women tended to be more trusting of and in the younger age groups non-White (BAME) respondents reported lower levels of trust in contrast to White respondents. Longitudinal analysis consists of is a series of conditional regression models which include the influence of socio-demographic characteristics, living arrangements, work status, social contact and expressions of loneliness across each generation. Notably, women remain more trusting of government than men in the oldest cohort and having a degree is associated with a negative influence on trust for the oldest and youngest. Loneliness diminishes trust in government for the youngest cohorts whereas vaccine reluctance only appears to matter for the oldest. For ‘trust in others’, there is little to differentiate between cohort members apart from the negative association of loneliness amongst the young. Findings for compliance with social distancing suggest that women are consistently compliant even, when reporting vaccine reluctance. The final wave included two measures to assess ‘government performance’; how the government handled the pandemic and whether or not the government was doing all it can to reduce the spread of COVID-19. In the case of the former those with a degree are consistently skeptical. Additionally, in the youngest cohort, women are typically negative in their assessment together with those who experience loneliness. For the latter measure, women together with BAME respondents are consistently positive in their evaluation whereas, vaccine reluctance tended to be associated with negative assessments.

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