Trust and COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic raises questions of trust in many domains, including interpersonal relationships, social behaviours, technology, and interactions with institutions and information. This prompts the need to consider trust holistically when attempting to understand it within any of these individual domains. An emerging theory of trust is applied to provide a perspective through which the interrelating effects of trust in multiple contexts can be understood in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. Understanding the collective erosion of trust in each of the domains addressed can contribute to understanding how citizens trust in important and reliable health advice provided by governments and institutions.