tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
Sci Rep
. 2025 Jul 21;15(1):26393.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-09758-6. Association of COVID-19 outcomes with measures of institutional and interpersonal trust: an ecological analysis using national data from 61 countries
Lillian Rountree[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Guangyu Tong[SUP] 2 3 [/SUP], Fan Bu[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Megan Ranney[SUP] 4 [/SUP], Bhramar Mukherjee[SUP] 5 6 [/SUP]
Affiliations
Despite the importance of human behavior in containing a disease outbreak, formal quantitative analyses examining the relationship between measures of trust and COVID-19 outcomes remain limited. We use data from Wave 7 (2017-2022) of the World Values Survey to assess the country-level relationship between trust and COVID-19 outcomes across 61 countries via clustering and regression. After adjusting for country-level confounders, our findings indicate that countries with low trust have significantly greater numbers of COVID-19 deaths (1200.6 more COVID-19 deaths per million, 95% CI [510.92, 1890.3]), significantly greater excess death (2289.1 more excess deaths per million, 95% CI [971.1, 3607.2]), and a lower vaccination rate (16.6 fewer people vaccinated per 100, 95% CI [-27.7, -5.6]) than high trust countries, suggesting a tangible impact of trust on country-level COVID-19 outcomes. We discuss differences between interpersonal and institutional trust and advocate for incorporating trust in disease modeling to better predict country-level outcomes.
. 2025 Jul 21;15(1):26393.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-09758-6. Association of COVID-19 outcomes with measures of institutional and interpersonal trust: an ecological analysis using national data from 61 countries
Lillian Rountree[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Guangyu Tong[SUP] 2 3 [/SUP], Fan Bu[SUP] 1 [/SUP], Megan Ranney[SUP] 4 [/SUP], Bhramar Mukherjee[SUP] 5 6 [/SUP]
Affiliations
- PMID: 40691221
- DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-09758-6
Despite the importance of human behavior in containing a disease outbreak, formal quantitative analyses examining the relationship between measures of trust and COVID-19 outcomes remain limited. We use data from Wave 7 (2017-2022) of the World Values Survey to assess the country-level relationship between trust and COVID-19 outcomes across 61 countries via clustering and regression. After adjusting for country-level confounders, our findings indicate that countries with low trust have significantly greater numbers of COVID-19 deaths (1200.6 more COVID-19 deaths per million, 95% CI [510.92, 1890.3]), significantly greater excess death (2289.1 more excess deaths per million, 95% CI [971.1, 3607.2]), and a lower vaccination rate (16.6 fewer people vaccinated per 100, 95% CI [-27.7, -5.6]) than high trust countries, suggesting a tangible impact of trust on country-level COVID-19 outcomes. We discuss differences between interpersonal and institutional trust and advocate for incorporating trust in disease modeling to better predict country-level outcomes.