Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the critical importance of public compliance with government-issued public health measures. This study investigates the relationship between political trust and compliance intentions with various pandemic policies in the United States, utilizing a pre-registered survey experiment. Drawing on a diverse national sample, we experimentally varied the type of public health measure (e.g., mandatory mask mandates, voluntary vaccination recommendations) and the source of the policy directive. Our findings indicate that higher levels of political trust, particularly trust in government institutions and scientific agencies, are significant predictors of increased compliance intentions across different policy types. Furthermore, we explore how partisan identification moderates this relationship, revealing that the effect of trust is often amplified among co-partisans and attenuated across partisan divides. The study underscores the fundamental role of political trust in effective crisis governance and offers crucial insights for policymakers aiming to enhance public health outcomes during future pandemics in politically polarized environments.
