What Accounts for Changing Public Trust in Government? A Causal Analysis With Structural Equation Model

There are unimaginable decreases in public trust in government over last half of the century. This study seeks explanations for the question of “what accounts for the changes in public trust in government across time in the United States of America during years between 1952 and 1998?”. Multi-dimensionality of trust concept attracted great deal of attention from scholars from different fields in the base disciplines of psychology, sociology, political science and economics, as well as in more applied areas like management and marketing. This study combined different views into three main streams as psychology, sociology and economics to explain the determinants of trust level in government. Several hypotheses derived from these three main stream perspectives were tested with time series data from the United States. Structural equation model seemed best fitting quantitative model for the framework. This model with two equations explains several causative relationships between independent variables and trust in government as a final dependent variable.