Social trust in the midst of pandemic crisis: Implications from COVID-19 of South Korea
Open accessAbstract
This study aims to exploit the situations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in South Korea to identify the causal effect of a pandemic crisis and institutional responses on social trust. With unique panel data collected in the course of the COVID-19 in South Korea and the use of individual fixed-effects models, we examined how social trust in various social institutions changed and identified a causal effect of crisis management on social trust. According to the results, trust in South Korean society, people, and the central and local governments improved substantially, whereas trust in judicature, the press, and religious organizations sharply decreased. Improvement in trust in the central and local governments was associated with proactive responses to the pandemic crisis, and failure to take appropriate actions was responsible for the deteriorating trust in religious organizations. These findings illustrate the importance of risk management in trust formation and imply that South Korea may be transforming from a low-trust to a high-trust society.
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Negative public health events such as epidemics often pose a huge challenge to social trust.
“Negative public health events such as epidemics often pose a huge challenge to social trust (Kye and Hwang, 2020; Woelfert and Kunst, 2020; Aassve et al., 2021).”
From COVID-19 pandemic and adolescent mental health in China: Micro evidence and socioeconomic mechanisms (2022) · cites this paper as Kye and Hwang, 2020
The Introduction (page not available) says trust can change substantially with institutions’ crisis management, supporting the idea that a pandemic can challenge social trust. But the Summary and discussion (page not available) reports mixed effects in South Korea, including improved generalized trust; this single case does not establish that epidemics often pose a huge challenge to social trust. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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References 17 · Cited by 161
Research works printed but not linked: 3
- Győrffy D. Trust and crisis management in the European Union: An institutionalist account of success and failure in program countries 2018 Palgrave Macmillan
- Lee J. Trust and civil society: Comparative study of Korea and America Korean Journal of Sociology 40 5 2006 61 98
- OECD Trust in government, policy effectiveness and the governance agenda OECD. Government at a glance 2013 2013 OECD Publishing Paris 19 37 10.1787/gov_glance-2013-en · DOI
- Authors
- Kye, B., & Hwang, S.-J.
- Affiliations
- Kookmin University (KR)
- Chungnam National University (KR)
- Corresponding author
- Hwang, Sun-Jae
- ORCID
- Hwang, Sun-Jae
- Venue
- Research in Social Stratification and Mobility
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2020-08
- Volume
- 68
- Pages
- 100523
- ISSN
- 0276-5624 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7301785
- OpenAlex
- W3036464754
- Cited by
- 161
- References
- 17
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 29 · 2022: 43 · 2021: 37 · 2020: 10
- FWCI
- 39.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Research in Social Stratification and Mobility (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2017S1A5A2A03068895)
- Ministry of Education
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Capital and Networks
- Social Sciences › Communication › Communication and COVID-19 Impact
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Risk Perception and Management
- Keywords
- social trust, COVID-19 pandemic, crisis management, institutional responses, public trust in government, risk management, trust formation, South Korea
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