Based on 974 sample data from 24 townships in 10 provinces, the impact of political trust and social trust on villagers’ political participation was analyzed. The study finds that the overall political trust of the villagers is significantly positively related to political participation. Among them, the villagers’ trust in the Party Central Committee and the township government has the strongest interpretation of their political participation. Social trust has no impact on the villagers’ political participation, general trust and special trust. There is no statistical significance in political participation with the villagers. That is, general trust and special trust have no statistical significance for the villagers’ political participation.
As one of the most common political behaviors, political participation is an important indicator of the country’s political modernization [
The political participation of villagers is the focus of academic research in recent years. According to the influence factors of villagers’ political participation, scholars have put forward a number of explanatory variables, but the basic identity and trust is one of the important variables. Trust is the core concept of social capital theory. It has always played an important role in related research at home and abroad. Trust includes political trust and social trust. Both of them directly affect the government’s governance ability and governance level [
Political trust is generally considered to be a positive political psychology, and is based on the positive behavior and relationships that arise from the interaction between citizens and the political system. Political trust generally refers to citizens’ beliefs or confidence that the political system or government’s output is consistent with their expected results [
At present, the academic community has made a qualitative or quantitative study on the relationship between political trust and political participation, and believes that there is a direct or indirect relationship between the two. Putnam indirectly stated in his book “Making Democracy Work” that trust and participation as social capital influence each other; According to Norris, the public with low level of trust in the government is more passive in assessing their distance from the government, and has a lower perception of the effectiveness of political participation, and the voting behavior is not very positive either [
Based on the above discussion, we can research hypothesis 1: The villagers’ political trust is significantly and positively related to political participation.
Putnam believes that social trust is the degree of mutual trust between citizens, and is an important component of social capital [
As far as the relationship between social trust and political participation is concerned, scholars’ research findings are slightly different, but overall there is a positive correlation between them. In a society with a high level of social trust, people tend to prefer association based on mutual trust, and organized members are more willing to participate in political activities. Domestic and foreign scholars generally use the broad concept of social capital to measure political participation, which greatly increases the complexity and ambiguity of social trust interpretation. In a study that separates social trust from social capital, Edlin et al. studied that when voters vote, they often consider not only the impact of election results on their own welfare, but also the impact of election results on other voters [
Based on the above discussion, hypothesis 2 of this study is proposed: villagers’ social trust and political participation are significantly positively related.
The data in this study were obtained from the database of “China Township Democracy and Governance Survey” hosted by Professor Maof Nankai University and Wang of the University of Nottingham. This project is a social survey on the development and governance of grassroots democracy in China. The data collection time was from July 2008 to April 2011. The sample selection covers 24 townships in 10 provinces or municipalities. Used non-probability sampling methods to sample villagers, selected 2 - 3 administrative villages for each township, conduct a comprehensive survey of households in each village, and finally obtain 2221 effective questionnaires. The questionnaires included information such as village demographics and socio-economic characteristics, evaluation of government functions, political participation, trust, and democratic appraisal. Based on the research questions of this study, only village demographic and socio-economic characteristics and trust were selected. And political participation data. After the data was obtained, the data was preprocessed, and the invalid data such as “not knowing”, “do not want to answer” were deleted, the missing data was averaged and, finally, 974 valid samples were obtained.
The description of all variables and their descriptive statistics are shown in
The independent variables of this study include control variables and explanatory variables, and the control variables include population variables and
Variable | Variable Assignment | Mean | Std. Deviation | Max | Min |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party Committee and Government of Centre | Completely distrust = 1, less trust = 2, more trust = 3, very trust = 4. | 3.579 | 0.615 | 4 | 1 |
Party Committee and Government of Province | Completely distrust = 1, less trust = 2, more trust = 3, very trust = 4. | 3.154 | 0.626 | 4 | 1 |
Party Committee and Government of County | Completely distrust = 1, less trust = 2, more trust = 3, very trust = 4. | 2.962 | 0.683 | 4 | 1 |
Party Committee and Government of Township | Completely distrust = 1, less trust = 2, more trust = 3, very trust = 4. | 2.860 | 0.781 | 4 | 1 |
Trust in Family | Completely distrust = 1, less trust = 2, more trust = 3, very trust = 4. | 3.767 | 0.471 | 4 | 1 |
Trust in Relatives | Completely distrust = 1, less trust = 2, more trust = 3, very trust = 4. | 3.525 | 0.576 | 4 | 11 |
Trust in Friends | Completely distrust = 1, less trust = 2, more trust = 3, very trust = 4. | 3.399 | 0.628 | 4 | 1 |
Trust in Strangers | Completely distrust = 1, less trust = 2, more trust = 3, very trust = 4. | 1.832 | 0.706 | 4 | 1 |
Trust in Business Partners | Completely distrust = 1, less trust = 2, more trust = 3, very trust = 4. | 2.636 | 0.738 | 4 | 1 |
Trust in Most People in Society | Completely distrust = 1, less trust = 2, more trust = 3, very trust = 4. | 2.501 | 0.725 | 4 | 1 |
Political Participation | No = 0, Yes = 1 | 0.64 | 0.481 | 1 | 0 |
Gender | Male = 1, female = 2 | 1.422 | 0.494 | 2 | 1 |
Nationalities | Han = 1, minority = 2 | 1.080 | 0.237 | 2 | 1 |
Age Group | 18 - 29=1, 30 - 39 = 2, 40 - 49 = 3, 50 - 59 = 5, 60 and above = 5 | 2.549 | 1.15587 | 5 | 1 |
Religious Beliefs | Christianity = 1, Buddhism = 2, Islam = 3, Taoism = 4, Folk religion = 5, Other religions = 6, No = 7 | 6.322 | 1.6908 | 4 | 1 |
Political Landscape | CCP members = 1, CYL members = 2, Democrats = 3, Non-partisan = 4 | 3.192 | 1.1747 | 4 | 1 |
Family Annual Income (yuan) | 1000 or less = 1, 1000 to 2000 yuan = 2, 2000 to 4000 yuan = 3, 4000 to 6000 yuan = 4, 6000 to 10,000 yuan = 510,000 to 20,000 yuan = 6, 20,000 to 30,000 yuan = 7, 30,000 to 40,000 yuan = 8, 40,000 to 60,000 yuan = 9, 60,000 to 100,000 yuan = 10. | 6.098 | 2.0201 | 10 | 1 |
Current Educational Level | Primary school and below = 1, junior high school = 2, high school = 3, junior college = 4, major school = 6, master’s degree and above = 6 | 2.272 | 1.011 | 6 | 1 |
socioeconomic variables. Population variables include villagers’ gender, ethnicity, age group and religious beliefs; socio-economic variables, family annual income and education level. The explanatory variables are the villagers’ trust, which is further divided into two aspects: political trust and social trust. Among them, the indicators of political trust include the trust level of the party committees and governments from the central government to the township level. Through a measure of the trust of the Party Central Committee and the government, the trust of provincial party committees and governments, the trust of county party committees and governments, and the trust of local township Party committees and governments, a more comprehensive analysis of villagers’ levels The level of trust of the government; Social trust includes general trust and special trust. In the questionnaire, trust in relatives, trust in one’s own family, trust in good friends, trust in strangers, trust in business partners Degree and the degree of trust of most people in society are measured in six aspects. All the answers to measure trust are divided into complete distrust, less trust, comparative trust, and very trust, and they are assigned 1 to 4 respectively.
From
According to
A simple calculation of the average value in
The dependent variable of this study is political participation. Political participation is a complex concept. In terms of form, it includes institutionalized participation and non-institutional participation. At present, the domestic research on
Level | Completely Distrust | Less Trust | More Trust | Very Trust | Number |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Party Committee and Government of Centre | 0.8% | 4.2% | 31.2% | 63.8% | 974 |
Party Committee and Government of Province | 0.5% | 11.2% | 60.7% | 27.6% | 974 |
Party Committee and Government of County | 2.2% | 18.8% | 59.8% | 19.3% | 974 |
Party Committee and Government of Township | 4.8% | 23.9% | 51.6% | 19.6% | 974 |
Target | Completely distrust | Less trust | More trust | Very trust | Number |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Trust in family | 0.4% | 0.9% | 20.2% | 78.4% | 974 |
Trust in relatives | 0.4% | 20.9% | 40.6% | 56.2% | 974 |
Trust in friends | 0.7% | 5.5% | 46.8% | 49.9% | 974 |
Trust in business partners | 6.0% | 34.2% | 50.2% | 9.7% | 974 |
Trust in most people in society | 8.4% | 38.4% | 47.8% | 5.3% | 974 |
Trust in strangers | 32.9% | 53.0% | 12.4% | 1.8% | 974 |
political participation activities focuses on two types of behaviors: election participation and protest behavior. The participation of villagers in village committee elections is the most important political participation of villagers, and it is also the most important manifestation of institutionalized political participation. This study uses participating elections to reflect the dependent variables, and the corresponding question in the survey questionnaire “Have you recently participated in the voting of the village committee owner (that is, the village chief) or the election of the deputies to the National People’s Congress?”, required the villager to choose between “not participating” and “participating”. The value of “Yes” is 0, and the value of “No” is 1. The results of descriptive statistics show that the participation rate of the villagers was 63.8%, which is more than 95% of the figures announced by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in 2013. This shows that the political participation of the villagers, especially election participation, is not an official announcement of optimism and mobilizes villagers’ politics. The enthusiasm for participation is an important task for promoting grassroots democracy.
In this study, SPSS 22.0 data analysis software was used to analyze the correlation between control variables and trust variables. The results showed that the correlation between the two variables is not high or there is no correlation, so trust can be used as an independent Explanatory variable. Secondly, the principal component analysis of the explanatory variables was performed, relevant factors were extracted and named. Finally, build a statistical analysis model. Model 1 only considers control variables and political trust variables to test hypothesis 1, model 2 only considers control variables and social trust to verify hypothesis 2, and model 3 adds social trust and political trust on the basis of control variables to compare the two impacts of political participation. Since the dependent variable of this study is a binary variable, all models were analyzed using Logistic Binary Regression.
Trust is a kind of subjective emotion, political trust and social trust belong to two dimensions of trust, they will influence each other, so it is difficult to independently test the influence on political participation. In this study, we used principal component analysis (PCA) to extract factors of trust before regression comparison. As shown in
From the empirical results in
Political trust | General trust | Special trust | |
---|---|---|---|
The level of trust in provincial party committees and provincial governments | 0.704 | 0.201 | −0.396 |
The level of trust in the county party committee and county government | 0.730 | 0.276 | −0.434 |
The level of trust in township party committees and governments | 0.690 | 0.318 | −0.331 |
The level of trust in the party central committee and the central government | 0.579 | −0.031 | −0.208 |
The level of trust in family | 0.564 | −0.600 | 0.077 |
The level of trust in relatives | 0.604 | −0.567 | 0.168 |
The level of trust in friends | 0.599 | −0.483 | 0.275 |
The level of trust in strangers | 0.260 | 0.510 | 0.509 |
The level of trust in business partners | 0.460 | 0.248 | 0.564 |
The level of trust in most people in society | 0.503 | 0.357 | 0.484 |
Variance contribution | 24.933% | 46.537% | 64.151% |
Note: the principal component analysis selects the variables whose eigenvalue is greater than 1 and concludes that the KMO value is equal to 0.748 Bartlett’s sphericity check chi-square value is 3138.748 and the significance is 0.00. It is suitable for factor analysis.
negatively related to political participation [
Since social trust is not related to the political participation of villagers, the two dimensions of social trust are not further discussed in terms of their impact on political participation, and the influence of villagers’ trust on political participation by party committees and governments at all levels is continuously observed. Based on the control variables, the trust degrees of the central, provincial, county, township party committees, and governments were incorporated into the model one by one, corresponding to model 4, model 5, model 6, and model 7, respectively. From the four models, it can be seen that the villagers’ level of trust in the four levels of government has a significant impact on political participation. Except for provincial party committees and the government, the level of trust is significant at P < 0.05, and the remaining three levels of government are all at P < 0.01 was significant, and the regression coefficients were
Model 1 | Model 2 | Model 3 | Model 4 | Model 5 | Model 6 | Model 7 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Control variable | |||||||
Gender | −0.279* (0.149) | −0.177 (0.149) | −0.259* (0.151) | −0.208 (0.148) | −0.204 (0.147) | −0.250* (0.148) | −0.297** (0.150) |
Nationalities | 0.798** (0.355) | 1.021*** (0.352) | 0.818** (0.356) | 0.952*** (0.353) | 0.939*** (0.352) | 0.881** (0.353) | 0.826** (0.355) |
Age group | 0.504*** (0.075) | 0.544*** (0.074) | 0.499*** (0.075) | 0.493*** (0.075) | 0.528*** (0.074) | 0.524*** (0.075) | 0.517*** (0.075) |
Religious beliefs | 0.112*** (0.042) | 0.118*** (0.041) | 0.113*** (0.042) | 0.123*** (0.042) | 0.117** (0.041) | 0.113*** (0.042) | 0.109*** (0.042) |
Political landscape | −0.04 (0.072) | −0.063 (0.071) | −0.046 (0.072) | −0.069 (0.072) | −0.061 (0.071) | −0.047 (0.072) | −0.041 (0.072) |
Family annual income (yuan) | 0.107*** (0.037) | 0.108*** (0.037) | 0.106*** (0.037) | 0.111*** (0.037) | 0.108*** (0.037) | 0.106*** (0.037) | 0.106*** (0.037) |
Current educational level | −0.172** (0.085) | −.194** (0.084) | −.173** (0.085) | −.203** (0.085) | −.190** (0.084) | −.161* (0.085) | −.178** (0.085) |
Independent variable | |||||||
Political trust | 0.346*** (0.076) | 0.345*** (0.076) | |||||
General trust | 0.026 (0.071) | 0.022 (0.072) | |||||
Special trust | 0.062 (0.073) | 0.058 (0.074) | |||||
Party committee and government of centre | 0.492*** (0.117) | ||||||
Party committee and government of province | 0.249** (0.117) | ||||||
Party committee and government of county | 0.409*** (0.108) | ||||||
Party committee and government of township | 0.434*** (0.095) | ||||||
Constant | 1.906*** (0.722) | −2.347*** (0.711) | −1.949*** (0.724) | −3.860*** (0.812) | −2.970*** (0.779) | −3.325*** (0.767) | −3.162*** (0.743) |
Cox & Snell R² | 0.141 | 0.132 | 0.142 | 0.138 | 0.126 | 0.135 | 0.141 |
Nagelkerke R² | 0.193 | 0.168 | 0.194 | 0.189 | 0.173 | 0.185 | 0.193 |
Note: The numbers in the table are rounded off. The number in parentheses is the standard error level of significance: ***P < 0.01, 0.01 < ***P < 0.05, 0.05 < P* < 0.1.
0.492, 0.249, 0.409, and 0.434, respectively, indicating that the more the villagers trust each level of government, the more they tend to participate in political activities. As can be seen from the table, the trust of the central government and the township government has a greater influence on the villagers’ political participation, while the provincial government’s influence on trust is relatively small.
It can be seen that the general political trust of the villagers has a positive effect on political participation, and that the trust of the government at the four levels of the central government, provinces, counties, and townships will affect their political participation. However, as far as social trust is concerned, general trust and special trust are not significant for the villagers’ political participation.
As the two dimensions of trust, political trust and social trust have all had a significant impact on the villagers’ political participation. Which one has a greater impact? This study uses 974 data from the Survey of Rural Democracy and Governance in China to analyze this issue. The main conclusions and discussions are as follows:
First, there is a strong positive correlation between political trust and villagers’ political participation. Political trust has significantly increased the possibility of villagers’ political participation. Huntington suggested that the promotion of political trust by individual citizens or social groups contributes to the political participation of the whole country [
Second, there is no statistical significance between social trust and villagers’ political participation. Whether it is general trust or special trust has no significant impact on the villagers’ political participation. The theory of social capital holds that horizontal interpersonal communication can increase interpersonal trust, which in turn makes it easier for people and people to form cooperative relationships. This makes it easier to form mass organizations and organizers are more willing to participate in political activities. This shows that general trust factors have promoted citizens’ political participation to a certain extent. However, why the general trust does not have a significant impact on the villagers’ political participation in this study needs further study.
Third, the villagers’ trust in party committees and governments at all levels has a significant influence on political participation. The more the villagers who are trusted by the government are more willing to participate in political activities such as elections, the results of this analysis are consistent with the conclusions of some domestic scholars. However, the existing research focuses on political trust mainly at the level of township party committees and governments, and believes that the positive correlation between the two exists is determined by China’s current political system and “pressure-type” local governance mechanism. There is a lack of comparison of the level of trust among governments at all levels and this study found that the villagers’ level of political trust at all levels will affect political participation. In other words, it’s not just the nearest township government to the villagers that has a clear role in political participation. This may be because with the rapid development of the media and the Internet, the vast rural areas have obviously increased their awareness of the policies and government activities promulgated by the senior and middle-level governments, and the flow of information between the governments at all levels and villagers has also been strengthened. The hard-to-reach behaviors and policies of high-level governments can also subjectively assess the performance of villagers, which in turn affects the villagers’ political participation. In all levels of government, the trust level of the government at the first and last tiers of the central government and townships explains the political participation of the villagers. This may be because the villagers visualize the central government as a state, and the state directly issues related policies concerning agriculture, rural areas, and agriculture. Guide the direction of rural development, so the villagers’ trust in the central government has a greater influence on their participation in political activities. Compared with other levels of government, township governments, as the executors of rural public policies, are the most basic governments that deal directly with the villagers and govern in villages. There is an important position among them, so the villagers’ trust in the township government explains the political participation of the villagers.
Of course, there are still shortcomings in this study, only “whether to participate in the election of village committee” as an indicator to measure villagers’ political participation, not other forms of political participation, the conclusion is bound to deviate. In addition, this paper based on the analysis of the database, only based on statistical interpretation of the research system rather than the explanation of causal mechanisms. In reality, the relationship between political trust, social trust and political participation is complex. It is difficult to get a true conclusion only in quantitative analysis, so fieldwork and other qualitative research methods are needed for further study.
Chen, Y. (2018) The Influence of Political Trust and Social Trust on the Political Participation of Villagers: Based on the Empirical Analysis of 974 Samples in 10 Provinces. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 6, 235-248. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2018.66021