Public Fear in the Information Age: The Mediating Effect of Government Trust on the Relationship Between Crime Data Release and Social Concern

Based on a stratified sampling survey of permanent residents from four major urban agglomerations in China, this study employs Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA=0.904) and Bootstrap method (1000 samples) to examine the relationship between multilevel variables. The findings reveal that the disclosure of criminal information is significantly and negatively associated with social fear through three dimensions: content completeness (β=0.28, p<0.01), accessibility (β=0.31, p<0.001), and timeliness of release (β=0.19, p<0.05) (total effect β=-0.196, p<0.01). However, the direct effect weakens when government trust is introduced (β=-0.07, ns). Government trust plays a fully mediating role (indirect effect β=-0.118, 95% CI [-0.182, -0.061]), meaning that information disclosure is positively associated with public trust, and trust is in turn negatively associated with the formation of fear. After controlling for confounding factors such as gender and victimization experience, this pathway demonstrates robustness across urban and rural groups as well as new media users. The study confirms that the governance efficacy of criminal information disclosure is essentially a trust-building process. By enhancing the timeliness and verifiability of authoritative information supply, it can strengthen institutional trust and buffer the psychological impact of crime data.