Communities are responsible for a range of public services and represent critical experiential contexts for social interactions between residents. However, the role of local governance and public service provision for creating social trust has received limited attention so far. This study examines how quality, efficiency and fairness of local public service provision relates to social trust. Using multilevel models on repeated cross-sectional survey data from the Quality of Life in European Cities project, we test the relationship between time-varying city-level indicators of quality of local government and social trust. The empirical results show that an increase in the dimension of local public service quality is substantially associated with an increase in social trust. We find improvements in sport and leisure facilities as well as the state of public spaces, streets and buildings to be particularly relevant.

社区负责一系列公共服务，并代表居民之间社会互动的重要体验环境。然而，迄今为止，地方治理和公共服务提供在创造社会信任方面的作用受到的关注有限。本研究考察了地方公共服务提供的质量、效率和公平性与社会信任的关系。使用来自欧洲城市生活质量项目的重复横断面调查数据的多级模型，我们测试了随时间变化的城市级地方政府质量指标与社会信任之间的关系。实证结果表明，地方公共服务质量维度的增加与社会信任度的增加密切相关。