Up or Down? Experimental Evidence on Spillover Effects of Corruption on Political Trust in Hierarchical Governance

Conventional wisdom holds that corruption undermines political trust, yet causal evidence remains limited, particularly in authoritarian contexts. This study addresses this gap by implementing a nationwide survey experiment in China to examine how exposure to corruption information affects political trust across multiple levels of government. Respondents were randomly assigned to receive scenarios involving corruption by officials at different administrative tiers, with trust measured both before and after treatment. The results show that exposure to corruption significantly reduces political trust, demonstrating a strong negative effect on perceived government legitimacy. Moreover, the findings reveal a spillover effect: corruption at higher levels of government not only decreases trust in the implicated level but also erodes trust in lower tiers. By establishing causal links between corruption cues and political trust across hierarchical institutions, this research advances the understanding of trust dynamics in authoritarian contexts and underscores the importance of targeted anti‐corruption efforts within multi‐level governance systems.

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