Sociaaleconomische status en institutioneel vertrouwen in een tijd van corona

During the corona pandemic, governments of all coun-tries made heavy demands on the trust of their populations by taking drastic social and economic measures to prevent the spread of the virus. In this study we aim to provide insight into mechanisms that influence the level of institutional trust during the corona pandemic. We are specifically interested in how three explanatory factors, socio-economic status (SES), perceived economic un-certainty and dissatisfaction with the corona policy, can mutually explain differences in institutional trust. This study is based on data from a large-scale survey of the social impact of COVID-19, conducted by the research agency Kieskompas (N = 22,696). With a serial mediation analysis, we show that SES has both a direct and indirect effect on the degree of institutional trust: people with a higher SES experience less economic uncertainty and have less dissatisfaction with the corona policy and partly as a result, more institutional trust. Additionally, economic uncertainty increases dissatisfaction with the corona policy, and partly as a result of this weakens the degree of institutional trust