Although research shows that acceptance, trust, and risk perception are often related, little is known about the underlying patterns of causality among the three constructs. In the context of a water-borne disease outbreak, we explored via zero-order/partial correlation analysis whether acceptance predicts both trust and risk perception (associationist model), or whether trust influences risk p...

We examined how racial-ethnic identity centrality, or the importance of race/ethnicity in people's self-perceptions, affected peoples’ support for Democratic and Republican candidates 2020 US election. explored this association by examining mediating role trust important social institutions. In Study 1, we these effects comparing pattern relationships among people color (POC) white people, usin...

The level of trust inherent in a society is important for a wide range of microeconomic and macroeconomic outcomes. This paper investigates how individuals’ attitudes toward social and institutional trust are shaped by the political regime in which they live. The German reunification is a unique natural experiment that allows us to conduct such a study. Using data from the German General Social...

Private-order market institutions founded on trust-based relational contracts suffer adverse selection and moral hazard problems, while public-order market institutions have a limited capacity to enforce contracts. We model agent selection between contract enforcement institutions and demonstrate that the state’s contract enforcement capacity is complementary to private-order contract enforceme...

What does the US public believe about the credibility of institutional actors when it comes to protecting information privacy online? Drawing on perspectives of environmental risk, this article addresses the question through a nationally representative telephone survey of 1200 adults who go online at home. A key result is that a substantial percentage of internet users believes that major corpo...