Economic performance, income inequality and political trust: new evidence from a cross-national study of 14 Asian countries

Political trust is a fundamental bedrock for a political system to work. The “trust-as-evaluation” approach has identified an individual’s perceived evaluation of economic performance and income inequality as critical determinants of political trust. Another stream of research has argued that macro-level factors, measured by macroeconomic indicators or GINI index, are correlated with political trust. To date, only a few empirical studies have questioned how macro-level performance interacts with those at the micro-level, namely, individuals’ subjective evaluations. Existing empirical studies mainly focus on Europe with little attention to Asia. To fill a gap in the literature, we extend the “trust-as-evaluation approach” to the Asian context, employing a multilevel analysis using the Asian Barometer Survey’s fourth wave. This study identifies that: (i) an individual’s perception of their economic well-being or inequality is the critical determinant of political trust; (ii) macro-level economic performance has an unclear and mixed effect on political trust; and (iii) instead, macro-level income inequality functions as a moderator between the relationship between perceived income inequality and political trust.