Impacts of Internet Use on Political Trust: New Evidence from China
Abstract
This study evaluates the impacts of Internet use on political trust in China. Negative effects are consistently found across variant measures of political trust. IV and PSM estimations confirm that the negative impact is causal. Further, placebo tests show that the traditional media as the primary information source hasn’t generated such effects and trust in friends hasn’t been impacted by Internet use. This effect is most likely attributable to the fact that internet use in China exacerbates public perception toward government and government officials, increases public demand for political participation, and raises the expectation of government performance.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Detrimental associations were found for trust in governments and politics, trust in media, and social and institutional trust.
“For example, detrimental associations were found for trust in governments and politics59,60,66,78–82, trust in media83, and social and institutional trust84.”
From A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy (2022) · cites this paper as [59]
In authoritarian regimes in Asia, increasing unrestricted internet access decreased levels of trust in the political system.
“In authoritarian regimes in Asia, increasing unrestricted internet access decreased levels of trust in the political system59,73,91.”
From A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy (2022) · cites this paper as [59]
Common causal inference techniques used in the sample include instrumental variable designs, matching approaches, and panel designs.
“Common causal inference techniques that were used in our sample include instrumental variable designs that introduce exogenous variation in the treatment variable59–63, matching approaches to explicitly balance treatment and control groups64–66, and panel designs that account for unobserved confounders with unit and/or time-fixed effects67,68.”
From A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy (2022) · cites this paper as [59]
Cites
Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space
Henderson, J. V., Storeygard, A., & Weil, D. N. (2012) · American Economic Review · doi:10.1257/aer.102.2.994 · Cited by 2,596 · see citing works
Information Manipulation, Coordination, and Regime Change*
Edmond, C. (2013) · The Review of Economic Studies · doi:10.1093/restud/rdt020 · Cited by 433 · cited 1× · see citing works
“In contrast, the government’s capacity in implementing public policies can be constrained and regimes may be overthrown as results of trust vacancy (Edmond 2013; Hooghe and Marien 2013; OECD 2013; Sullivan and Transue 1999; Zmerli and Newton 2017).”
BackgroundInternet, trust in government, and citizen compliance
Im, T., Cho, W., Porumbescu, G., & Park, J. (2014) · Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory · doi:10.1093/jopart/mus037 · Cited by 245 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy
Lorenz-Spreen, P., Oswald, L., Lewandowsky, S., & Hertwig, R. (2022) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-022-01460-1 · Cited by 348 · see citing works
- Authors
- Zhou, D., Deng, W., & Wu, X.
- Affiliations
- Shanghai Jiao Tong University (CN)
- Hunan University (CN)
- Ramapo College (US)
- Corresponding author
- Deng, Weiguang
- Venue
- Emerging Markets Finance and Trade
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2019-08-16
- Volume
- 56
- Issue
- 14
- Pages
- 3235-3251
- ISSN
- 1061-2009 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-496X
- 1558-0938
- OpenAlex
- W2967278554
- Cited by
- 22
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4
- FWCI
- 4.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Emerging Markets Finance and Trade (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (71703100, 71874051)
- the Social Science Association of Hunan Province (2016194)
- Research Fund of Ministry of Education of China (17YJCZH267)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › E-Government and Public Services
- Keywords
- internet use, public trust in government, public opinion on government, political participation, traditional media, trust in friends, China
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
