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.

中文翻译：

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经济表现，收入不平等和政治信任：来自对14个亚洲国家的跨国研究的新证据

政治信任是政治体制运转的根本基础。“信任即评估”方法已将个人对经济绩效和收入不平等的感知评估确定为政治信任的关键决定因素。另一研究来源认为，由宏观经济指标或GINI指数衡量的宏观因素与政治信任有关。迄今为止，只有很少的经验研究质疑宏观水平的绩效如何与微观水平的绩效相互影响，即个人的主观评价。现有的经验研究主要集中在欧洲，很少关注亚洲。为了填补文献中的空白，我们使用“亚洲晴雨表调查”第四波进行的多层次分析，将“信任作为评估方法”扩展到亚洲背景。这项研究表明：（i）个人对自己的经济状况或不平等的看法是政治信任的关键决定因素；（ii）宏观经济绩效对政治信任的影响不明确和混杂；（iii）相反，宏观水平的收入不平等起到了感知的收入不平等与政治信任之间关系的调节器的作用。