Americans’ Trust in Government and Health Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The importance of trust in government amid health emergencies has become apparent, especially given its impact on health behavior. Yet scholars often treat trust simplistically, measuring it at one point in time and in a unidimensional way. We use a unique series of surveys carried out during the first year of the pandemic to examine changing trust in different government actors over time and then link relative trust to compliance with expert-recommended health behaviors. We find that trust in government declined during this period, with especially large declines for federal and state relative to local government. We find somewhat steeper declines among women, Black Americans, the less educated, and Republicans. Finally, we find that trust in state governments and local health officials was positively associated with protective health behaviors, especially among Republicans, and that trust in the federal government was associated with a lower likelihood of such behaviors.