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First-Hand Experience and Second-Hand Information: Changing Trust across Three Levels of Government

Gina Yannitell Reinhardt Public Service and Administration, Bush School of Government, Texas A&M University

Abstract

Little is known about how different sources of information drive citizen trust in government. To address that gap this article compares disaster evacuees to observers, noting how trust differs as attention to media coverage increases. First-hand experience supplies information to update trust through biological and personal processes and performance assessments, while secondary sources provide information about other people’s experiences, filtered through lenses that take an active role in crafting information. These two types of information have varying effects depending on the level of government being trusted. Using surveys administered a year after Hurricane Katrina, I find that Katrina evacuees have the highest trust in federal government, until they start paying attention to media coverage, and that attention to coverage has the most dramatic effect on these evacuees compared to all other groups. I also find that increasing attention to second-hand information corresponds with higher trust in local officials, and that this effect decreases as the level of government increases. It appears media coverage creates a comparison in the mind of hurricane evacuees, causing them to update their performance assessments based on comparing their own experience to that which they observe, thereby updating their political trust.

KEY WORDS: political trust, government performance, media, disasters, federalism, Katrina, hurri- cane, information, levels of government

Introduction

Extensive work shows that people base political trust on assessments of govern- ment performance, including issues such as the economy (Hetherington &

Rudolph, 2008; Keele, 2005), scandals (Keele, 2007), and crime (Kelleher &

Wolak, 2007; Sindall, Sturgis, & Jennings, 2012). When citizens believe public

officials do a poor job, trust in them tends to decline, a pattern that transcends

national, state, and local levels (Rahn & Rudolph, 2002). In the past decade, pub-

lic management of and policy regarding disasters has also been blamed for

declining political trust (Robinson, Liu, Stoutenborough, & Vedlitz, 2013).

Fournier (2010) argues that the 2010 BP oil spill caused “a crisis of faith in public

and private institutions.” Nicholls and Picou (2013) tie Hurricane Katrina to

drops in American political trust locally, state-wide, and federally. After the

Dai-ichi nuclear disaster in March 2011, a poll revealed trust in Japanese institu-

tions “had plummeted” (Economist, 2012).

Do disasters drive political trust in ways different from noncritical events? Cur-

rent studies do not distinguish disaster management from other management or

policy situations. In this article, I contribute to the literature on political trust by

arguing that disasters have a unique effect on political trust based on the way

information is delivered to disaster survivors versus observers. These differences

do not exist in the same way in noncritical management and policy episodes, but

they do mold the perception of government performance both for those

Review of Policy Research, Volume 32, Number 3 (2015) 10.1111/ropr.12123 VC 2015 Policy Studies Organization. All rights reserved.

345

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experiencing a disaster, and for those observing the event from afar. As informa-

tion is received, citizens update their political trust differently depending on

whether they experience or observe the critical event. Differences in the source

and quality of information then drive differences in political trust. Even when

the media determines a disaster to be a policy or management failure, such as

Hurricane Katrina, those experiencing the policy and management decisions

directly can have their political trust bolstered, while those observing the deci-

sions through media filters have their political trust damaged.

The hurricanes of the 2004–05 hurricane seasons provide a unique opportunity

to study information and trust in a federal system because they offer well

managed and poorly managed disasters that were followed by observers around

the world (Gallup, 2005; Kohut, Allen, & Keeter, 2005) and required activity from

all levels of government (Schneider, 2008). Using data collected on political trust

and hurricane experience after these seasons, I examine the relationship between

attention to media coverage, hurricane evacuation experience, and political trust

at all levels of government. I find support for my propositions that disaster survi-

vors update political trust based on first-hand experience with the outcomes of

policy and management decisions, while observers rely on third-party sources that

relay secondary information regarding other people’s experiences. These differen-

ces in information beget differences in political trust that depend on the percep-

tion of the performance being evaluated. Importantly, those who have direct

experiences with disasters end up with higher levels of political trust than observ-

ers, as long as they pay no attention to media coverage. When disaster survivors

do pay attention to media coverage, however, that coverage molds their political

trust and makes it look more like that of disaster observers. Among the two

media-watching groups, local political trust increases with attention to coverage,

state political trust increases at a lower rate, and federal political trust declines.

That is, the effect of attention to media coverage on political trust becomes more

negative, the higher the level of government.

These findings are important in the wealth of comparisons they allow us to

make. Comparing the opinions of disaster observers and survivors to each other is

rarely done because disaster survivors are such a difficult-to-reach population. Con-

sequently, studies tend to either focus exclusively on survivors, generally in shelters

(Eckel, Mahmoud, & Wilson, 2009; Whitt & Wilson, 2007), or exclusively on

observers (Maestas, Atkeson, Croom, & Bryant, 2008; Schneider, 2008). Comparing

media effects on trust across levels of government has been done but never with

observers and survivors side by side such that we can see how the trust of two

groups moves as media and the level of government both change. The fact that the

slope of the effect of attention to media coverage on political trust becomes more

negative as the level of government increases speaks to the need to return to the

ongoing debate on the sources of national and subnational trust (Hetherington &

Nugent, 2011; Jennings, 1998; Rahn & Rudolph, 2002; Ulsaner, 2002), which have

not yet considered disaster management or media behavior as causes.

The dichotomy between survivors and observers distinguishes disasters from

other management and policy outcomes that influence political trust only as they

become salient to an individual (Hetherington & Husser, 2011). Nondisasters

condition political trust through individual experience with those issues and with

346 Gina Yannitell Reinhardt

their perceived outcomes (Chanley, Rudolph, & Rahn, 2000; Hetherington,

1998; Hetherington & Rudolph, 2008; Keele, 2005, 2007; Weatherford, 1987).

For disaster observers, critical events form political trust through perceptions of

others’ experiences. This doubles the power of secondary sources, which first

have the opportunity to select and mold information as it moves from the survi-

vor experience to the observer perception, and then the ability to craft political

trust for people who are not directly affected by a policy outcome.

My findings imply that media coverage of disasters has the potential to over-

ride personal disaster experience in the formation of performance assessments.

This phenomenon suggests that trust is damaged not simply by personal dissatis-

faction with particular policy decisions, but by evaluating one’s personal circum-

stances in the context of others’ experiences, and in light of the opinions of

information conduits. These implications are particularly relevant at a time when

citizens are easily categorized based on their preferred source of information.

Those receiving second-hand information from Fox News and MSNBC, the least

informative news sources (Cassino, Woolley, & Jenkins, 2012), will trust differ-

ently from newspaper readers (Moy & Scheufele, 2000). If media outlets are

driven by market considerations, outlets’ marketing strategies are forming politi-

cal trust systematically according to viewer characteristics.

These findings also have practical implications. Trust is necessary to achieve

citizen compliance that begets safety, efficiency, and cooperation (Wang &

Kapucu, 2008). Trust in public officials gives them the legitimacy and respect

required to fulfill their duties (Christensen & Laegreid, 2005), including manag-

ing disasters. At critical moments, trust in disaster managers is necessary to the

smooth operation of response efforts and swift economic recovery (Kapucu,

2008). A loss of trust can lead to a failure to cooperate in crucial moments, such

as the recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. The national-level CDC is direct-

ing management of the Ebola crisis for the United States, and citizens are receiv-

ing their information regarding the situation from media sources of their choice.

These media outlets deliver information based on the desire to hold viewers’

attention, molding trust in the CDC and either bolstering or undermining the

agency’s ability to communicate and contain the outbreak in the process.

Political Trust, Disasters, and Information

Consider an individual-level theory of government performance and trust, where

trust is an orientation toward public officials or agencies based on character and

ability (Keele, 2007; Miller, 1974). Trust is the belief one has that public officials

can and will perform their jobs: A trusts B to do X (Hardin, 2002, p. xx). Trust increases with the belief that an official is both capable of doing its job (I trust

him to do it because he is competent at doing it) and has the moral fortitude to

do it when called upon (I trust him to do it even if it is a personally difficult

thing to do; see Hardin, 2004; Levi & Stoker, 2000; Nicholls & Picou, 2013;

Ullmann-Margalit, 2004).

Trust is grounded in part in an evaluation of officials’ performance. Informa-

tion to assess performance originates on one of two levels: primary or secondary.

Changing Trust across Three Levels of Government 347

Primary, first-hand information comes from interactions with public officials and

their management and policy decisions; personal experience with the outcomes

of those decisions updates trust. Secondary information regards outcomes that

affect other people, decisions with which an individual does not have actual expe-

rience; with secondary information, perceptions update trust. A source of infor-

mation conditions political knowledge and trust, because the quality of

information can deteriorate as it moves from primary sources to secondary deliv-

ery mechanisms (Lin et al., 2014; Moy & Pfau, 2000; Moy & Scheufele, 2000).

When perceptions gleaned from secondary sources are negative, they damage

political trust much more than positive perceptions boost it, and can be nearly

impossible to reverse (Kaminski & Jefferis, 1998; Weitzer, 2002).

Disasters, unplanned disruptions in social systems sparked by critical events

(Quarantelli, Lagadec, & Boin, 2006), separate citizens into two groups based on

how they receive information about government performance. Those living

through the disaster update political trust based on first-hand experience, which

triggers mechanisms of performance assessment as well as biologically driven trust

processes. These disaster experiencers have their political trust activated due to the

uncertainty inherent in critical situations (Chryssochoidis, Strada, & Krystallis,

2009), particularly when they sacrifice their personal autonomy and decision-

making power to those in charge, trusting public officials to make decisions on their

behalf (Montgomery, Jordens, & Little, 2008). Evacuees bond with other survivors

and public officials during evacuation and recovery, which can also build political

trust through release of the neuropeptide oxytocin (Merolla, Burnett, Pyle, Ahmadi,

& Zak, 2013). In addition to these biological and personal means, evacuees update

political trust with performance assessments based on their own experience.

Meanwhile, disaster observers watch from afar, receiving information via con-

duits such as the media, which is likely to slant their perceptions for two reasons.

First, disaster coverage in the media tends to be evocative and shocking (Izard &

Perkins, 2011), priming viewers to receive emotional suggestion rather than fact

(Atkeson & Maestas, 2012). Personal interest stories result in skewed perceptions

(Jha & Izard, 2011; Perkins & Li, 2011) and false information (Sommers, Apfel-

baum, Dukes, Toosi, & Wang, 2006; Stromback & Nord, 2006). Observers tend

to forget that the information is not about their own experience with public man-

agement or policy outcomes; rather, it is information about other people’s expe-

riences. Already anxious, observers are inclined to distort perceptions when

thinking about applying another’s situation to their own circumstances (Camerer

& Kunreuther, 1989; Leschine, 2002; Wåhlberg & Sj€oberg, 2000).

Studies show that viewers receive shocking and visceral information as

although it is “real life,” rather than mediating it with “the cognitive acknowl-

edgement that this is ‘only television’” (Mutz & Reeves, 2005, p. 3), even though

journalists have chosen to convey images and stories unrepresentative of the

population of events. While media sources are responding to a 24-hour news

cycle, government sources are carefully checking facts before giving information,

meaning official updates come more slowly. “When more information is coming

from media than from government, trust begins to shift” toward the media as a

reliable source of information (Wang & Kapucu, 2008). If the information differs,

distrust in public officials grows.

348 Gina Yannitell Reinhardt

Disaster experiencers also turn to media sources for information. For example,

evacuees may turn to television news to find weather reports, or they may hunt

down visual evidence of damages in the disaster area on the Internet. Although

this information does not originate from personal contact with public officials, it

still pertains to outcomes that influence them directly. They will, therefore,

receive it differently from the way of observers, who will be receiving information

that pertains to someone else. Ultimately, disasters affect political trust by updat-

ing information individuals use to assess trust. Experiencers receive information

personally and biologically, while observers receive information via second-hand

sources that take an active role in selecting and crafting the information itself.

Considering Federalism

The intricacies of federalism introduce another dimension into the relationships

among disasters, information, and political trust. Because disasters activate trust

in public officials, the disaster experience can either erode or strengthen political

trust, and can even erode political trust at one level of government while

strengthening it at another. This is possible due to the active role of the media

and the ability to shift blame in a federalist system.

A successfully managed disaster validates and fortifies trust, uniting citizens

with public officials to overcome fear, rally around a cause, and rebuild a commu-

nity (Teets, 2009). Poorly managed disasters diminish trust by exposing the

inabilities of officials to carry out the work they were entrusted to perform (Troy,

2004), often damaging trust more than a well-managed event can bolster it

(Slovic, 1993). “Trust is fragile. It is typically created rather slowly, but it can be

destroyed in an instant” (Slovic, 1999, p. 697).

Like disaster experience, the effect of media coverage on trust depends on the

nature of the coverage. Positive reports increase trust but not as noticeably as

negative reports damage it (Slovic, 1993). Negative coverage garners more view-

ership and, therefore, more media focus as well. Reports on national officials

carry the bonus of appealing to the most viewers, so negative coverage on

national officials tends to get a disproportionate amount of media attention, and,

therefore, has disproportionate negative effects on national political trust (Little-

field & Quinette, 2007).

Not all citizens know the responsibilities of each level of government during a

disaster (Schneider, 2008), making it easier for public officials to shift blame to

other levels of government (Birkland & Waterman, 2008). With the media’s assis-

tance, this shift often goes to the national level (see Maestas et al., 2008). For

example, millions clamor for information during catastrophes1 such as Hurricane

Katrina. It is easy to lose patience, and with it trust in public officials. Hurricane

Katrina was noted widely as a public management failure (Nicholls & Picou,

2013), during which the media “stepped outside their role of objective observer

and assumed a privileged position of pointing blame toward legitimate author-

ities” (Littlefield & Quinette, 2007, p. 27). Coverage of Katrina is, thus, seen as

markedly damaging to trust (Atkeson & Maestas, 2012; Birkland & Waterman,

2008).

Changing Trust across Three Levels of Government 349

In contrast, U.S. hurricanes leading up to Katrina had largely been managed

well and are likely to have bolstered trust for those living through them. The

2004 experience with Hurricane Charley resulted in efficient responses to Flori-

da’s subsequent hurricanes of that season (Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne), including

swift coordination of local, state, and federal responses (FEMA, 2009). Local offi-

cials’ management of these disasters meant national media coverage was less,

and those who experienced these hurricanes are likely to have had good

experiences.

I, thus, propose that when disasters occur, observers react differently from

those experiencing disasters directly. In other words, reactions to disaster man-

agement are mediated by the experience of those who survived it, and by the

media’s portrayal of the event to those who observed it. When comparing those

who live through the disaster to those who observe it, disasters, thus, offer us the

chance to examine a unique relationship between information and trust within

the citizenry. Because disaster management, and the policies surrounding it, are

the responsibility of public officials at the local, state, and federal levels, this

opportunity exists at all levels of government.

Putting it Together: Hypotheses

Based on the discussion above, I hypothesize three relationships:

Hypothesis 1a. The more negative the experience, measured by first-hand Katrina evacuation,

the lower the trust.

Hypothesis 1b. The more positive the experience, measured by evacuation for non-Katrina

hurricanes, the higher the trust.

We should see the lowest trust among those experiencing a “bad” disaster,

the highest among those experiencing a “good” disaster, and moderate trust

among those who observe disasters filtered through the media. Hypotheses 1a

and 1b may seem obvious, but should be tested if only to validate the sample

used here.

Hypothesis 2. The higher the level of government, the more negative the effect of attention to

media coverage on trust.

National media coverage focuses on negative aspects of critical events and

national public figures (Littlefield & Quinette, 2007). Regardless of evacuation

experience, we should expect the most positive relationship (slope) between

media and trust to be at the local level. For state trust, that relationship should

be less positive, and federal trust should have the least positive relationship. Said

differently, as the level of government increases the slope of the relationship

between attention to media coverage and trust should grow more negative.

I examine these propositions with two different methodologies. First, a differ-

ence of means test clarifies whether Hypotheses 1 and 2 are worth pursuing. If

the media has an influence on trust, we should see different levels of trust among

citizens that pay different levels of attention to the media. The second test, a

350 Gina Yannitell Reinhardt

seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) model, allows for cross-sectional analysis of

the variation in trust with controls for individual demographics and partisanship.

A SUR model is almost the equivalent of separate ordinary least squares (OLS)

models for federal, state, and local political trust, except the SUR model esti-

mates all trust variables, coefficients, and standard errors of each separate OLS

at the same time. This allows the simultaneous estimation of multiple dependent

variables with independent variables that are shared or unique to one or more

levels of trust, and accounts for the possibility of correlated error terms among

the estimated equations. If there are no correlated error terms, SUR estimations

will be identical to separate OLS estimations (Zellner, 1962).

Model, Data, and Estimation

I test these hypotheses in the context of the 2004–06 hurricane seasons. Contain-

ing more than 10 major hurricanes that required evacuation, these were the

deadliest and costliest seasons on record, displacing over three million people,

costing over $202 billion, and killing 2,150 people (Lott, Smith, Houston, Shein,

& Crouch, 2013; Stein, Duenas-Osorio, Buzcu-Guven, Subramanian, & Kahle,

2011). Survey data were collected in September 2006, one year after Hurricanes

Katrina and Rita. The lag between natural event and survey is important as it

allows for short-term effects of the disasters to wane. We know extreme reactions

are likely to abate over time (Bracht & Glass, 1968; Chong & Druckman, 2010).

Fielding this study a year after the hurricanes makes it less likely to measure

ephemeral phenomena and more likely to capture enduring effects.

Data are from an Internet survey collected in 2006, administered by Survey

Sampling International (SSI)2 to residents of hurricane-threatened areas in the

United States. Hurricane-threatened areas contain respondents with registered

addresses in a county or parish that either borders the coast or is separated from

the coast by no more than one other county/parish. The region surveyed spans

the U.S. coastline from Texas through North Carolina. Displaced residents, at

the time of the survey living outside their original home counties/parishes, were

included based on their original physical home addresses before displacement, so

responses came from 38 states and Puerto Rico. Of the 7,024 respondents, 2,329

(33.16%) reported evacuating for a hurricane during the 2004–06 hurricane sea-

sons. Of those, 1,068 (15.21%) had still not returned home, which we take as evi-

dence that the sampling frame was useful for contacting a difficult-to-reach

population, while still striving for maximum generalizability (Appendices A and

B contain survey questions and descriptive statistics).

There has been much debate and scholarship on the proper measurement of

trust. Recall that trust is based on one’s competence, or ability to perform one’s

job, as well as one’s credibility, or believability and character (Hardin, 2004;

Keele, 2007; Nicholls & Picou, 2013). Scholars often use indices to capture the

multidimensionality of trust. Many use the Trust in Government Index from the

American National Election Studies (ANES), which offers easily accessible longitu-

dinal data,3 but does not allow questions about trust in specific policies or offi-

cials. We opted to create an index asking specifically about A’s (the respondent’s)

Changing Trust across Three Levels of Government 351

assessment of public official B (e.g., the president), with respect to Y, disasters. Examining trust in federal, state, and local executives and emergency managers

yields six dependent trust variables, one each for the: president; governor;

mayor; and federal, state, and local emergency management officials. Each

ranges 0–10, 10 being highest.

Respondents who evacuated for a hurricane at any point during the 2004–06

hurricane seasons are given a one for disaster experience, zero otherwise.

Katrina evacuees receive one for Katrina evacuation, zero otherwise. I choose

evacuees rather than all survivors (which would also include those affected who

did not evacuate), because evacuees are more likely to have had experience with

their local and state officials, and/or the consequences of their policy decisions,

via evacuation routes and instructions, possible shelter exposure, and relinquish-

ing/returning to property.

Measuring exposure to the media is notoriously difficult because of memory

and false reporting problems (see Mutz, 2011). I, thus, use a self-reported mea-

sure that captures attention to media surrounding Hurricane Katrina events and

recovery. Maestas et al. (2008) argue that attentiveness is composed of both expo-

sure to and engagement by media coverage, and is, therefore, a better measure

of the reception of information than a measure of frequency (0–5, 5 highest).

I control for partisanship. Keele (2005) finds that Democrats and Republicans

trust the president more when he is a member of their party, and Schmitt,

Gunther, and Liebhart (2004) find observers likely to accept second-hand infor-

mation fitting their partisan expectations. Since President Bush appointed the

director of FEMA and was seen with him during Katrina recovery, I expect

Republicans to be more trusting of President Bush and FEMA. In state trust

regressions, I control for membership in the governor’s party (0, 1),4 expecting

trust to increase for the governor and state emergency management agency

among respondents who share their governor’s party. Those who voted for

George W. Bush receive a one in the dichotomous Voted for Bush variable,

expected to be more trusting of federal officials than those who did not. Ideology

is a 7-point scale with higher values indicating a stronger preference for govern-

ment intervention (higher liberalism).5

To avoid possible biases from omitted demographic variables, I include stand-

ard demographics of education, age, sex, and race (Christensen & Laegreid,

2005; Hetherington, 1998; Keele, 2005). Standard expectations are that men

trust less than women (Christensen & Laegreid, 2005), and that race can matter

in assessing trust of some officials (Rudolph & Popp, 2010), particularly in the

context of Hurricane Katrina, which the media characterized as a racially salient

event (Gomez & Wilson, 2008; Nicholls & Picou, 2013).

I am not trying to model all influences on individual political trust. Other

impressive work incorporates municipal- or community-level factors (Marschall &

Shah, 2007; Rahn & Rudolph, 2005; Rahn, Yoon, Garet, Lipson, & Loflin, 2009).

Rather, I investigate the basic idea that first-hand information, less common at

higher levels of government, allows space for the media to step in and provide

information that is then used to evaluate government performance and influence

trust. As such, I hope to explain a facet of individual-level trust that has not been

illuminated previously.

352 Gina Yannitell Reinhardt

A Visual Analysis

When hypotheses involve categorical variables, a visual inspection can be a useful

intuitive test: do the measures in question appear to move according to the

hypothesized relationships? If trust and attention to the media move together

conditional on the level of government, it would provide nominal evidence of a

relationship. Figure 1 plots political trust (averaged over all respondents) and

attention paid to media coverage of Hurricane Katrina for each of the six

officials.

The visual pattern is strikingly consistent with Hypothesis 2, that the effect

of attention to media coverage will be most positive at the local level, and

most negative at the federal level. The two lowest, dashed lines show trust in

FEMA and the president declining with greater attention to media coverage.

Trust in state and local officials appear to either go up or be unresponsive.

Difference-of-means tests confirm (Table 1): those paying high attention to

coverage have significantly lower federal trust, similar state trust, and signifi-

cantly higher local trust than those who pay low attention. With this prelimi-

nary positive support for our second hypothesis, I move on to more complex

statistical analysis.

Figure 1. Trust Target Profiles by Media Attention

Table 1. Mean Differences of Trust in Government

Federal State Local

President FEMA Governor State EMA Mayor Local EMA

High attention to media 4.19 4.10 5.88 6.52 6.29 7.55

Low attention to media 5.66 5.46 6.13 6.63 5.73 6.90

Difference 1.46** 1.35** .26* .11 2.56** 2.65**

N 2,235 2,235 2,235 2,235 2,235 2,235

Note: Two-tailed tests. Comparison of means between 11-point trust indicators.

*p < .05, **p < .01.

Changing Trust across Three Levels of Government 353

Results

Table 2 displays the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) for all six officials: a

respondent’s president, FEMA, governor, state EMA, mayor, and local emergency

services. Each model contains the variables mentioned above plus controls for

state of residence prior to evacuation, using Louisiana as a baseline. The atten-

tion to media variable is entered on its own and interacted with each type of

evacuation experience, to allow attention to coverage to have different effects for

evacuees of Katrina, evacuees of other hurricanes, and observers.

I use Presidential Trust results to help explain the table. Katrina gives the

change in trust for Katrina evacuees (compared to observers) who pay zero atten-

tion to media coverage: .81 (p < .01) for President Bush. Non-Katrina is the

Table 2. Estimates of Political Trust in Executives and Emergency Management Agencies at Three Levels of Government

President FEMA Governor State EMA Mayor Local EMA

Attention to Media 2.05* 2.08** .12** .15** .21** .19**

for Observers (.02) (.02) (.02) (.02) (.02) (.02)

Attention to Media 2.27** 2.36** .06 .00 .14** .22**

for Katrina Evacuees (.07) (.07) (.06) (.06) (.06) (.05) Attention to Media 2.06 2.03 .16** .14** .16** .16**

for non-Katrina Evacuees (.04) (.04) (.04) (.03) (.04) (.03)

Katrina Experience .81** .91** .01 .20 2.30 2.13

(.30) (.32) (.28) (.24) (.28) (.21) Katrina Experience 3 Media 2.22** 2.28** 2.04 2.13* 2.08 .03

(.07) (.07) (.07) (.06) (.07) (.05)

Non-Katrina Experience 2.04 2.32* 2.14 2.03 .32* .32**

(.15) (.16) (.14) (.12) (.14) (.11) Non-Katrina Experience 3 Media 2.01 .05 .05 2.00 2.06 2.02

(.05) (.05) (.04) (.04) (.04) (.03)

Democrat 2.75** 2.36** 2.21** .04 .03 .03

(.08) (.08) (.08) (.07) (.08) (.06) Republican 1.29** .68** 2.25* .21* .52** .42**

(.09) (.09) (.11) (.09) (.08) (.06)

Governor of Same Party 1.07** .23**

(.09) (.08) Voted for Pres. Bush 2.20** .56** .78** .57** 2.18** 2.06

(.07) (.07) (.08) (.07) (.06) (.04)

Ideology 2.07** .02 2.01 2.01 2.01 2.04**

(.02) (.02) (.02) (.02) (.02) (.01) Race 2.13 .13 .07 2.17 2.01 2.56**

(.12) (.13) (.11) (.10) (.11) (.09) Sex 2.12 2.22** 2.15* 2.15* 2.18* 2.03

(.08) (.08) (.07) (.06) (.07) (.06) Age 2.01** 2.03** 2.00 2.01** 2.00 .01**

(.00) (.00) (.00) (.00) (.00) (.00)

Education 2.65** 2.58** 2.34** 2.24** 2.06 2.07

(.07) (.07) (.06) (.06) (.06) (.05) Employment 2.23** 2.16* 2.23** 2.09 2.02 .02

(.06) (.07) (.06) (.05) (.06) (.05)

State Controls Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Constant 4.39** 4.95** 3.47** 5.10** 4.80** 5.91** (.19) (.20) (.18) (.16) (.18) (.14)

Observations 7,016 7,016 7,016 7,016 7,016 7,016

R-squared .35 .13 .19 .12 .05 .06

Notes: Base comparison group for Democrats and Republicans is Independents. Base comparison for state con- trols is Louisiana. Robust standard errors in parentheses.

*p < .05, **p < .01.

354 Gina Yannitell Reinhardt

change in trust for evacuees of other hurricanes who pay no attention to cover-

age: an insignificant 2.04. Attention to Media for Observers is the change in trust

for a unit increase in attention to media for observers (2.05; p < .05). If we plot- ted the relationship between attention and trust for observers, and did the same

for Katrina evacuees, the coefficient on Katrina experience 3 Media gives the

difference in the slopes of those two lines. For the president, attention has a neg-

ative effect for observers, and the effect is .22 more negative for Katrina evacuees

(p < .01). A similar interpretation is appropriate for Non-Katrina experience 3 Media. The effect of attention to media coverage, conditional on being a Katrina

evacuee, is the sum of coefficients for Media and Katrina experience 3 Media

(2.052.22 5 2.27). The second and third rows of Table 2 give coefficients for

these linear combinations. For Katrina evacuees, a one-unit attention increase

lowers trust in President Bush by .27 (p < .01). Attention for evacuees of other hurricanes is insignificant.6

Consider Hypotheses 1a and 1b, which assess the disaster experience as nega-

tive or positive by whether a respondent evacuated for Katrina or a non-Katrina

hurricane. These hypotheses are borne out under certain conditions. The poor

(Katrina) disaster experience has created lower levels of trust at the federal level

but only among Katrina evacuees who pay attention to media coverage. Katrina

evacuees who pay no attention to the media trust President Bush .81 more, and

FEMA .91 more, than observers (both p < .01), and exhibit no differences from observers at all in state or local trust. Meanwhile evacuees of other hurricanes

have a higher trust than observers of their local Mayor and Local EMA (both .32

higher; p < .05 and p < .01). Unexpectedly, however, those non-Katrina evacuees who pay no attention to the media actually trust FEMA less than observers (.32 points lower; p < .01).

Turn now to Hypothesis 2, which posits that increasingly negative attention

and increasing focus on higher levels of government will cause the slope of the

relationship between attention to media and trust to decrease as the level of gov-

ernment increases. The results for Hurricane Katrina evacuees, given in the sec-

ond row of Table 2, most vividly bear out this prediction. Local trust and

attention have a significantly positive slope (.14 Mayor, .22 Local EMA; both p < .01), flatten at the state level (insignificant .06 and .00), and then move to a sig-

nificantly negative slope for federal trust (2.27 President, 2.36 FEMA; both p < .01). For observers (first row) the slope pattern is the same: the highest slope is

for local trust (.21 Mayor, .19 Local EMA; both p < .01), slope declines but remains significant for state trust (.12 Governor, .15 State EMA; both p < .01), and then is lowest for federal trust (2.05, p < .05 President; 2.08, p < .01 FEMA). Evacuees of non-Katrina hurricanes differ. Attention to media has no

effect on federal trust, but reflects increases in trust by similar amounts for the

Governor, State EMA, Mayor, and Local EMA (.16, .14, .16, .16; all p < .01). Partisanship variables are significant in particular regressions. Democrats have

lower trust than Independents in President Bush (.75), FEMA (.36), and the

Governor (.21; all p < .01). Republicans have higher trust in President Bush (1.29, p<.01), FEMA (.68, p<.01), State EMA (.21, p<.01), the Mayor (.52, p<.01), and Local EMA (.42, p<.01). Sharing the Governor’s party increases trust in the Governor (1.07, p<.01), all but two of whom were Republican, and State

Changing Trust across Three Levels of Government 355

EMA (.23, p<.01). Voting for President Bush has a positive link with trust for all officials, with the largest coefficient unsurprisingly going to President Bush

himself.

Previous theories and findings suggest that skepticism, possibly stemming

from experience, education, and an urge to challenge authority, will have lower

political trust (Catterberg & Moreno, 2005; Fiscella, Franks, & Clancy 1998).

Negative relationships between trust and sex, age, education, and employment

confirm these ideas. It is also not surprising that Blacks are significantly less

trusting of their Local EMA than respondents of other races (2.56, p < .01),7 or that men are less trusting than women of FEMA, Governors, State EMA, and

Mayors (2.22, 2.15, 2.15, 2.18, all p < .05).

Discussion

The idea that the media influences political trust is not new. What is new is the

ability to compare these influences between people who experience a critical

event and those who observe the event only through media coverage. The

opportunity to gauge the trust of disaster evacuees who paid no attention to cov-

erage reveals that experience with what scholars and journalists consider a policy

and management failure can still boost political trust when unbiased by media

coverage.

As soon as Katrina evacuees begin paying attention to media coverage, that

coverage causes their trust in federal officials to slope downward much more

quickly than for either of the other two groups. Why is attention to media cover-

age exhibiting such a drastic relationship with this group, and not either of the

others? We may be witnessing a bit of distrust bred from comparison. For exam-

ple, it has been noted that some evacuees were allowed to live near their aban-

doned homes while others were transported across state lines without being

notified (Sterett, 2011). If one were far from home and not paying attention to

media coverage, political trust could still be intact. On seeing coverage of other

people living near home, however, trust could drop. In other words, Katrina

evacuees’ trust was affected by witnessing other survivors enjoying different

benefits.

It is also possible that those paying attention to the media were doing so

because they did not trust their officials to manage the mitigation and recovery

process appropriately, that they were predisposed to be less trusting. This point

calls into question the direction of causality between trust and attention to media

coverage. Because we do not have measures of previous trust levels, or instru-

ments of attention to coverage, the question cannot be empirically settled here.

Instead we can discuss associations between attention to coverage and trust found

here, and base conclusions of causality only on theoretical guidance and previous

scholarship.

Can we be certain evacuees are distinguishing the policy and management

decisions according to the officials who made them? We cannot (although see

Schneider, 2008). Vallone, Ross, and Lepper (1985) suggest that evacuees could

be using the information they receive to support ideological positions they

356 Gina Yannitell Reinhardt

already hold; that is, if they previously found their local officials more trustwor-

thy than their federal officials, updates to performance assessments will be likely

to confirm those preconceptions. This could be why evacuees in Sterett’s (2011)

study lost faith in their federal officials for evacuating them to Denver from Loui-

siana, despite the fact that the very need to leave Louisiana meant their state and

local officials had failed to competently prepare for and mitigate the critical

event. One of the finer implications of this study, then, is that we should probe

more deeply into how evacuees, as a special and separate group, interact with

attention to media coverage to attribute blame and update trust.

We should also be careful to note the effects of good and bad experience on

trust. Those with a “good” evacuation experience (non-Katrina hurricanes) trust

their local officials more than everyone else, no matter how much attention they

pay to coverage of Hurricane Katrina. It is possible that another comparison

effect is taking place. Del Pino (2005) reports that citizens evaluate public admin-

istration according to the results they see, meaning reports of poor performance

in New Orleans could have called to mind the good performance of local officials

for these other evacuees, who Trainor and Barsky (2010) tell us are the norm.

At least two more caveats must be issued. First, the sample is voluntary, and

although we took steps to minimize nonresponses, participation was restricted to

people with access to the Internet before the hurricanes. The sample does repre-

sent a broad cross-section of people, and importantly, it does not need to be gen-

eralizable to the entire United States. It would be inappropriate to target a

population with a higher proportion of individuals who had no interest in or

experience with hurricanes. This work should still allow generalizations about

assessments and trust, based on observed versus experienced events, among

observant individuals.

Second, limitations of the survey instrument prohibit examining some interest-

ing aspects. We do not know how much information respondents received from

other secondary sources, such as friends or coworkers, how often evacuees inter-

acted with public officials, or whether respondents believe government failed.

This information would give us a fuller picture of the relationships investigated

here. Their absence does not destroy our inferences, because confirmed percep-

tions of failure are not necessary to test our hypotheses. Establishing that trust

varies according to and conditional on information points us firmly toward fur-

ther exploration.

Conclusion

Although previous studies have evaluated Hurricane Katrina’s effects on national

attributions of blame (Birkland & Waterman 2008; Gomez & Wilson, 2008; Maes-

tas et al., 2008), to date no one has been able to compare a large sample of

observers to evacuees to see whether and how different experiences and levels of

information condition trust at various levels of government. These findings imply

that the media’s part in crafting trust goes beyond reporting on public officials.

Even coverage about national government behavior in another part of the coun-

try, reports of state governments that are not one’s own, and coverage about local

Changing Trust across Three Levels of Government 357

governments far from one’s residence can damage or bolster trust in one’s offi-

cials at home. This means public officials are fighting performance issues at

home, and performance perception issues caused by officials elsewhere. Consid-

ering the widespread coverage of scandals of mayors, attorneys general, and

Members of Congress, this effect of one official’s news on another’s trust gives

new meaning to the idea that one bad story can give everyone a bad name.

While previous studies of media and attributing blame during Katrina have

focused on prominent national news outlets such as The New York Times, many people get their news today from more targeted, and less informative, sources

(Cassino et al., 2012). The segmenting of media consumption into predictable

groups, and the resultant targeting of media toward those groups, implies that

future media coverage will shape trust in different ways for different observers.

As these groups continue to use second-hand information to shape their per-

formance assessments, trust will depend on the media outlet and the public offi-

cial in question much more than it has in the past, making differences in

information delivery all the more crucial to understand.

Determining the impetus of political trust is essential in a federal system,

where power and responsibility are distributed across levels of government. The

task is particularly important during critical times because decisions happen

quickly and policies must be followed swiftly, often without time to deliberate

alternative courses of action, and often by officials in bureaucratic agencies.

Agency and organization theories tell us these managers are appointed so some-

one with expertise will be in charge of managing specific policy arenas (McCub-

bins, Noll, & Weingast, 1987, 1989), in this case emergencies and disasters. What

we must remember is that the managers in these agencies are not susceptible to

electoral review. We, therefore, have to trust that they are competent and believ-

able; otherwise we have no reason to presume they can or will accomplish the

tasks associated with their jobs. Trust is the bond that gives citizens confidence

operations will go well during a disaster, and thereby gives public officials the

space to make the decisions necessary to achieve success. For the decision makers

appointed to make policy and manage crises, political trust is necessary to do

their jobs. If we want to manage the emergencies, we have to trust the managers.

Notes

1 A catastrophe is worse than a disaster in that it damages multiple communities, and emergency per- sonnel cannot perform their functions due to death, injury, or inability to reach those in need.

Most activities stop, including worship, recreation, and public services (Quarantelli, 2006).

2 SSI fielded a random sample within the target population. We restrictively defined nonresponses

as “unknown eligibility”—they might indicate unwillingness, unavailability, or death. By this esti-

mate, our response rate was AAPOR-1 at 9.4% (Smith, 2009). As Merkle and Edelman (2002) and

Keeter, Kennedy, Dimock, Best, and Craighill (2006) find no connection between response rate

and survey accuracy, the rate here is not a concern.

3 The ANES is collected biennially during even-numbered years. Derived from Stokes (1962), the

questions were designed to gauge “basic evaluative orientations toward the national government,”

(p. 64). Stokes never mentions political trust or trust in government in his original analysis.

4 This is collinear with Republican when the governor is Republican. I retain the basic party control because, as Keele (2005) points out, there may be differences in trust due to party identification.

358 Gina Yannitell Reinhardt

5 Erikson, MacKuen, and Stimson (2002) find that people mislabel their ideology, for example, call-

ing themselves liberal when opposing intervention. I follow Keele (2005) and measure ideology through support for government economic intervention. Higher support indicates more liberal

preferences.

6 These values were generated with Stata’s postestimation lincom command. If B is the vector of coefficients, V is the covariance matrix of B, and A 5 AT 3 B is a vector defining the linear combi- nation, the variance of the linear combination is AT 3 V 3 A (Judge, Griffiths, Hill, L€utkepohl, & Lee, 1985).

7 Blacks are consistently less likely than other races to trust law enforcement agencies (Kaminski &

Jefferis 1998; Sindall et al., 2012; Weitzer, 2002).

About the Author

Gina Yannitell Reinhardt is Assistant Professor of Public Service and Administration at Texas A&M University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of international development and disasters.

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Appendix A: Survey Questions

Trust

The trust index for each official is the average of the answers to the following questions:

On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means not at all competent in dealing with hurricanes and their

effect on residents, and 10 means completely competent, please rate each of the following:

Your city’s mayor

Your state’s governor

The current President of the United States

Your local fire department

Your local police department

Your local rescue/ambulance squad

Your state emergency management agency

FEMA

On a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means not at all believable and 10 means completely believable,

please rate each of the following:

Your city’s mayor

Your state’s governor

The current President of the United States

Your local fire department

Your local police department

Your local rescue/ambulance squad

Your state emergency management agency

FEMA

362 Gina Yannitell Reinhardt

The following tables give correlation coefficients for competency and believability for each

official.

Trust in

Official

Competency

of Official

President

Competency of President Bush 0.95

Believability of President Bush 0.96 0.82

Governor

Competency of Governor 0.94

Believability of Governor 0.95 0.78

Mayor

Competency of Local Mayor 0.93

Believability of Local Mayor 0.93 0.72

FEMA

Competency of FEMA 0.95

Believability of FEMA 0.95 0.81

State EMA

Competency of State EMA 0.92

Believability of State EMA 0.92 0.69

Overall

Local Trust

Competency

Police

Believability

Police

Competency

Fire

Believability

Fire

Competency

Ambulance

Competency of Local Police 0.85

Believability of Local Police 0.86 0.69

Competency of Local

Fire Department

0.86 0.77 0.57

Believability of Local

Fire Department

0.90 0.61 0.83 0.66

Competency of Local Ambulance 0.84 0.74 0.56 0.82 0.62

Believability of Local Ambulance 0.89 0.60 0.80 0.64 0.93 0.66

Attention to Media Coverage

The “attention to media coverage” measure for each respondent is the average of the answers to

the following questions:

How closely would you say you followed the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina?

0 1 2 . . . 8 9 10

Not at all closely Extremely closely

How much attention do you pay to news reports about the reconstruction of the areas affected

by Hurricane Katrina?

0 1 2 . . . 8 9 10

No attention A great deal of attention

Changing Trust across Three Levels of Government 363

Fewer than 2.5% of respondents scored themselves as 5 or lower on the 0–10 scale, so those scor-

ing 0–5 were collapsed into one group and all given 0. The rest were given their original value

minus 5 points.

Appendix B: Descriptive Information

Variable Measurement Method N Mean StDev Min Max

Trust in the President Composite Index of Trust in President

7,016 5.031214 3.248908 0 10

Trust in FEMA Composite Index of Trust in

FEMA

7,016 5.062928 2.927698 0 10

Trust in the Governor Composite Index of Trust in R’s Governor

7,016 6.335448 2.685108 0 10

Trust in the State EMA Composite Index of Trust in

R’s State EMA

7,016 6.856899 2.248983 0 10

Trust in the Mayor Composite Index of Trust in R’s Mayor

7,016 6.326326 2.499055 0 10

Trust in the Local EMA Composite Index of Trust in

R’s Local EMA

7,016 7.385737 1.902128 0 10

Katrina Experience 1: Evacuated for Katrina; 0: else

7,024 0.1271355 0.3331485 0 1

Non-Katrina Experience 1: Evacuated for Non-

Katrina Hurricane; 0: else

7,024 0.2099943 0.4073332 0 1

Attention to Media Coverage

Composite Index of Atten- tion to Coverage and

Events surrounding

Katrina and

Reconstruction

7,024 2.855567 1.742806 0 5

Democrat 1: Democrat; 0: else 7,024 0.3134966 0.4639473 0 1

Republican 1: Republican; 0: else 7,024 0.3431093 0.4747814 0 1

Governor of Same Party 1: Member of Governor’s

Party; 0: else

7,024 0.3500854 0.4770304 0 1

Voted for Pres. Bush 1: Voted for President Bush;

0: else

7,024 0.4933087 0.4999908 0 1

Ideology 1–7: Very Likely to support

government intervention to share wealth

7,024 3.522637 1.730463 1 7

Race 0: Non-Black; 1: Black 7,024 0.0815774 0.2737394 0 1

Sex 0: Female; 1: Male 7,016 0.2082383 0.4060771 0 1

Age Years 7,011 46.0542 13.64931 18 90 Education 0: No college degree; 1: Col-

lege degree

7,016 0.3255416 0.4686103 0 1

Fulltime Employment 1: Fulltime employment; 0

else

7,024 0.5673405 0.4954798 0 1

Alabama 1: Resident of AL (pre-evac);

0: else

7,024 0.0196469 0.1387936 0 1

Florida 1: Resident of FL (pre-evac);

0: else

7,024 0.3573462 0.4792521 0 1

Georgia 1: Resident of GA (pre-evac);

0: else

7,024 0.0375854 0.1902049 0 1

Mississippi 1: Resident of MS (pre-evac);

0: else

7,024 0.0338838 0.180943 0 1

North Carolina 1: Resident of NC (pre-evac);

0: else

7,024 0.0882688 0.2837056 0 1

South Carolina 1: Resident of SC (pre-evac);

0: else

7,024 0.0821469 0.274608 0 1

Texas 1: Resident of TX (pre-evac);

0: else

7,024 0.2529897 0.4347561 0 1

Louisiana 1: Resident of LA (pre-evac);

0: else

7,024 0.1174544 0.3219839 0 1

364 Gina Yannitell Reinhardt

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