Association of COVID-19 outcomes with measures of institutional and interpersonal trust: an ecological analysis using national data from 61 countries

Despite the importance of human behavior in containing a disease outbreak, formal quantitative analyses examining the relationship between measures of trust and COVID-19 outcomes remain limited. We use data from Wave 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values Survey to assess the country-level relationship between trust and COVID-19 outcomes across 61 countries via clustering and regression. After adjusting for country-level confounders, our findings indicate that countries with low trust have significantly greater numbers of COVID-19 deaths (1200.6 more COVID-19 deaths per million, 95% CI [510.92, 1890.3]), significantly greater excess death (2289.1 more excess deaths per million, 95% CI [971.1, 3607.2]), and a lower vaccination rate (16.6 fewer people vaccinated per 100, 95% CI [−27.7, −5.6]) than high trust countries, suggesting a tangible impact of trust on country-level COVID-19 outcomes. We discuss differences between interpersonal and institutional trust and advocate for incorporating trust in disease modeling to better predict country-level outcomes.