Do long-term natural disasters influence social trust? Empirical evidence from China

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Abstract

The natural environment is one of the most critical factors that profoundly influences human races. Natural disasters may have enormous effects on individual psychological characteristics. Using China’s long-term historical natural disaster dataset from 1470 to 2000 and data from a household survey in 2012, we explore whether long-term natural disasters affect social trust. We find that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between long-term natural disaster frequency and social trust. We further examine the impact of long-term natural disaster frequency on social trust in specific groups of people. Social trust in neighbors and doctors is stronger where long-term natural disasters are more frequent. Our results are robust after we considering the geographical difference. The effect of long-term natural disasters remains positively significant after we divide the samples based on geographical location. Interestingly, the impact of long-term flood frequency is only significant in the South and the impact of long-term drought frequency is only significant in the North.

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Li, Y., Li, H., & Ruan, J. (2021). Do long-term natural disasters influence social trust? Empirical evidence from China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(14). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147280

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