A large-scale survey on trust in regulatory regimes in Europe was conducted by the TiGRE consortium in 2020 by approaching key actors involved in the regulatory regimes for data protection, financial services and food safety.

The TiGRE partners have recently published a methodological report which outlines the steps needed in the design and the implementation of this multi-actor, multi-sector, and cross-country survey.

This report has been published open-access in the ARENA Report Series. If you want to know more about the survey data and methodology, click here for the download link.

The GOVTRUST Centre of Excellence (University of Antwerp, Belgium) is happy to organise the second GOVTRUST Annual Symposium, on 17 February 2022 at 14:00 - 17:00 CET.

The theme of the Symposium is “Trust and the Governance of Technology” and highlights the vital role of trust in harnessing the transformative potential of digital technologies for governments and citizens alike.

During the Symposium, members of the GOVTRUST consortium and guest speakers will present recent work on the topic of trust and technology, identify key learning points, and raise some crucial questions and issues for discussion.

Please save the date and check the Symposium’s website for more information and registration!

Our second policy brief, which is entitled "Trust in regulatory agencies: experts and citizens perspectives”, reports key findings from two original surveys measuring experts’ and citizens’ trust in regulatory agencies.

These surveys cover three policy sectors - data protection, financial services and food safety - and were conducted by the TiGRE project in six countries: Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Netherlands, and Norway.

This policy brief compares trust in regulatory agencies across countries and sectors, and it discusses differences and similarities with respect to trust patterns for experts and citizens.

We also highlight possible implications and next steps for further investigations within the TiGRE project.

You can download the brief by clicking here: enjoy reading and feel free to share it!

The TiGRE large-scale survey examines trust between actors involved in the regulatory regimes for data protection, financial services and food safety. The survey was fielded in nine European countries and at the EU level. Respondents, selected for their expertise within the abovementioned sectors, work at organisations that encompass the entire regulatory regime – from legislators to regulatory agencies to regulated organisations. The dataset, comprising of 1,484 unique observations, provides crucial cross-country, cross-sector insight into trust in European regulatory governance.

This info sheet focuses on the results from survey responses in the nine countries and highlights key findings.

Check our outcomes page for the download link, and enjoy reading!

The UAntwerpen team from TiGRE has published an article in Regulation & Governance entitled "What drives compliance with COVID-19 measures over time? Explaining changing impacts with Goal Framing Theory".

The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to study which factors drive compliance and how the evolving context in society – virus fluctuations and changing government measures – changes the impact of these factors. Extant literature lists many factors that drive compliance – notably enforcement, trust, legitimacy. Most of these studies, however, do not look across time: whether a changing context for citizens changes the impact of factors driving compliance. In this study, we use Lindenberg’s Goal Framing Theory to explain the dynamics of these drivers of compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic. We formulate hypotheses for pro-socialness, trust in government, observed respect for rules, rule effectiveness, rule appropriateness, fear of COVID-19 (severity and proximity), opportunities for pleasure and happiness as well as worsened income position. We test our hypotheses with data collected at three different moments during the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in Flanders, Belgium. Findings show that over time the constellations of factors that drive compliance change and, later in the pandemic, more distinct groups of citizens with different motivations to comply are identified. The overall conclusion is that the voluntary basis for compliance becomes more fragile over time, with a more differentiated pattern of drivers of compliance emerging. Public policy and communication need to adapt to these changes over time and address different groups of citizens.

The full article is available for download at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co...

Tobias Bach, TiGRE consortium member at University of Oslo, has a vacant position for a postdoctoral fellow in the project “Public leadership, organizational performance, and trust in government” (PART) funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The project focuses on the professional background of chief executives in government agencies and SOEs and how sector switching affects organizational performance, employee priorities and motivation, and citizens’ trust. The project will be using career data, document analysis, and survey experiments with citizens and bureaucrats.

The appointment is for a fixed period of 4 years, with a 25% teaching requirement, and with excellent working conditions and high quality of life. The application deadline is 1st November 2021. Applicants have to submit a research proposal that contributes to the broader research agenda of the project. More information can be found here.

The TiGRE project organised its first Stakeholder Forum meeting to present and discuss the results of our large-scale survey on trust in regulation. This meeting was organised online on 10 June 2021 and gathered multiple actors involved in the regulation of three high-value sectors: food safety, finance and data protection.

A short report summarising the key points discussed during the meeting is available for download here.

We are looking forward for the second Stakeholder Forum meeting: date, purpose and format will come in due time!

The Uni-Speyer team in TiGRE was happy to participate to the virtual 96th Annual Conference of the Western Economic Association International (WEAI) on 27 June - 01 July 2021.

The WEAI 2021 Conference was the opportunity to gather 1814 economists from 59 different countries and to discuss more than 950 research papers over 280 sessions!

Prof. Dr. Rahel Schomaker (Uni-Speyer) gladly presented a paper entitled "Trust in Governance and Public Administration in the Times of Crisis – Evidence from a World Survey in the COVID-19 Pandemic".

Discover our first summary for publication, including a description of the project and the results achieved in the first year of TiGRE.

The summary is available for download on the Outcomes page of the TiGRE website: enjoy reading!