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Government performance, political trust, and citizen subjective well-being: evidence from rural China

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Abstract

Little is known about the political determinants of subjective well-being across nations. The objective of the study presented in this article is to single out the importance of a variety of determinants on the perceived quality of life in China, aiming, in particular, to understand the role and the importance of political conditions. Using individual level data from a survey conducted in Ya’an Municipality of Sichuan Province, our analysis shows that not only the personal situation and the local environment, but also the performance of one’s town/township government, as well as political trust are relevant for citizens’ subjective well-being. However, if political trust is important for satisfaction with life, this is predominantly an effect of trust in local government. In the Chinese context, our findings confirm that citizens’ quality of life is influenced by the legitimacy of the political order, conceived in terms of output-legitimacy, i.e., the perception of governmental performance.

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Notes

  1. Indeed, analysis of intra-class correlations shows that 19.7% of the variance of the dependent variable is explained at the town level—multi-level modelling is therefore warranted. Because of the relative small number of 10 towns/townships, restricted maximum likelihood estimation is used as recommended by Steenbergen and Jones (2002).

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Acknowledgements

The research for this article is supported by the Investigation into China’s National Conditions Programme (Institute-level), the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (2014–2017). Mr. Chen Ziruan, then Party Secretary of Tianfeng Township, Yingjing County facilitated support of Ya’an Municipality to this survey. Professor Shan Guoyan of Sichuan Agricultural University led her students at the Department of Sociology for assisting the administration of the survey. Dong would like to thank the Department of Political Science, University of Zurich for hosting him from September 2020 to August 2021, when this article is finalized. A previous version of this article was presented at the colloquium ‘Housing in Urban China’, organised by the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, Sciences Po Paris (June 13th to 15th 2019). The authors would like to thank participants for helpful comments and feedback.

Funding

The research for this article was supported by the Investigation into China’s National Conditions Programme (Institute-level), the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (2014–2017).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China

    Lisheng Dong

  2. Institute for Global Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Lisheng Dong

  3. Department of Political Science and Center for Democracy Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Daniel Kübler

Authors
  1. Lisheng Dong
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Contributions

LD designed and administered the questionnaire survey and wrote the literature review and theoretical parts of the article; DK made data analysis and drafted and revised the article.

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Correspondence to Lisheng Dong.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 5 and 6.

Table 5 Perceptional independent, dependent and control variables: factor analysis (PCA)
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Table 6 Assessment of local government policies: factor analysis (PCA)
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Dong, L., Kübler, D. Government performance, political trust, and citizen subjective well-being: evidence from rural China. GPPG 1, 383–400 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-021-00024-9

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