‘Ask not what your country can do for you’: Legacies of the great recession and the ‘Trust crisis’

This paper investigates how persistent changes in trust caused by the Great Recession have affected how citizens across Europe responded to the next global crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic. We show that increases in mistrust towards institutions caused by individual exposure to the 2007–08 financial crisis led to significant declines in mobility during the initial period of lockdown. We interpret this effect as being consistent with individuals prioritizing their own safety amid perceived breakdowns in the social contract. This result suggests that economic events that lead to changes in social trust have lasting legacies by affecting government and citizen responses to future crises.