IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v22y2019i1p55-66.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trust and the risk of consuming polluted water in Shanghai, China

Author

Listed:
  • Nahui Zhen
  • Jon Barnett
  • Michael Webber

Abstract

It is commonly understood that political trust reduces public perceptions of various kinds of risk. However, this knowledge largely comes from research conducted in liberal democratic states, and so may have little explanatory power in China. Though it has an authoritarian government, China has enjoyed relatively high levels of political trust, and so is a unique case from which to advance knowledge about political trust and risk perception. We describe the relationship between risk perception and political trust in China through analysis of results from a survey of 5007 residents in Shanghai asking about people’s perceptions of the risk of consuming tap water (a key public good), and their levels of trust in the public water authorities. Findings reveal that political trust in general, and trust in the perceived fairness, honesty and capability of water authorities significantly reduces the perception of the risk of consuming tap water. This suggests that the inverse relationship between trust and risk perception applies regardless of whether a society is democratic or authoritarian.

Suggested Citation

  • Nahui Zhen & Jon Barnett & Michael Webber, 2019. "Trust and the risk of consuming polluted water in Shanghai, China," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 55-66, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:22:y:2019:i:1:p:55-66
    DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2017.1351469
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2017.1351469
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13669877.2017.1351469?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mykolas Simas Poškus & Audra Balundė & Lina Jovarauskaitė & Goda Kaniušonytė & Rita Žukauskienė, 2021. "The Effect of Potentially Groundwater-Contaminating Ecological Disaster on Adolescents’ Bottled Water Consumption and Perceived Risk to Use Tap Water," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-17, May.
    2. Veronika Vaseková, 2022. "How do people in China perceive water? From health threat perception to environmental policy change," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 12(3), pages 627-645, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:22:y:2019:i:1:p:55-66. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.