Regulatory Capture, Trust in Government, and Civic Engagement

• In Event: Adaptation Strategies in Collaborative Environmental Management

Abstract

Collaborative governance, which involves coordination across sectors and levels of government, depends heavily on public trust. However, two important questions remain underexplored: how perceptions of regulatory capture affect public trust in different levels of government, and how that trust influences citizens’ willingness to engage with public issues—especially in the environmental domain.

Regulatory capture occurs when government regulators serve special interests rather than the public good. This can happen through material capture, such as bribery, or cognitive capture, where regulators unintentionally adopt the perspectives of the industries they regulate. Although regulatory capture is widely assumed to damage public trust, empirical validation remains limited. Moreover, empirical studies rarely examine how different types of capture affect public trust across central and local governments. Moreover, the role of multilevel trust in shaping civic behavior—especially pro-environmental behavior—remains unclear. Some citizens may act out of trust in institutions, while others may engage due to distrust or dissatisfaction. Whether trust matters more for private actions like household recycling or public actions like policy support also remains debated. In addition, the effects of trust may not be uniform across levels of government; trust in local governments may play a stronger or weaker role compared to trust in central authorities.

This study examines these issues through the case of environmental regulation in China. The Chinese context is particularly useful because it features a clear hierarchy in public trust in government, with citizens typically expressing more confidence in the central government than in local authorities. We conducted an online survey with 1,927 participants across six provinces to explore three questions: (1) Does perceived environmental regulatory capture affect public trust in central and local governments? (2) How does trust in multiple levels of government influence pro-environmental behaviors in the private and public spheres? (3) Does environmental regulatory capture inhabits pro-environmental behaviors through the mediation of public trust in government?

The findings reveal three key insights. First, both perceived material and cognitive capture significantly reduce public trust in government, with stronger effects observed for local trust. Second, trust in local government is a consistent and strong predictor of pro-environmental behaviors in private settings and non-activist pro-environmental behaviors in public life. In contrast, trust in the central government shows no significant behavioral effects. Third, both perceived material and cognitive capture significantly suppress pro-environmental behaviors, and this effect is mediated by trust in local government, particularly in the public sphere.

This study contributes to the field in two ways. It highlights regulatory capture as an overlooked institutional factor shaping political trust, and demonstrate its deterrence effect in public trust in multiple levels of government and engagement in public issues. It extends existing research on the behavioral consequences of political trust by showing how trust in central versus local government differentially shapes pro-environmental behaviors in private and public spheres, and  shows that trust in local government plays a more critical role than central government trust in encouraging civic actions, especially on environmental issues.

Authors

• Songsong Chen, Tsinghua University
  Presenting Author

• Jianhua Xu, Peking University
  Non-Presenting Co-Author