Institutional Trust and Compliance with Measures to Fight COVID-19

The paper investigates the causal relationship between the trust in institutions and compliance with measures introduced to slow down the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 in Slovakia. In addition, the impact of socio-economic characteristics on compliance with introduced measures was analysed. Data were obtained from a survey carried out by the Slovak Academy of Sciences on a representative sample of the Slovak population of 1,000 respondents. To derive the causal relationship between institutional trust and compliance behaviour, a probit regression model was used. Findings suggest that trust in public institutions helps to increase compliance with social distancing. In addition, some socio-economic characteristics such as employment status, age or whether individuals felt endangered by COVID-19 had a positive and statistically significant effect on compliance with measures used to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Institutional trust did not have a statistically significant effect on compliance with face-covering measures. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11294-021-09818-3.