Local conditions, perceived fairness and political trust: disentangling the effects of neighbourhood deprivation and distributive perceptions

Source abstract

Spatial inequalities are often linked to declining political trust, yet individual-level evidence suggests a more complex relationship than aggregate patterns imply. This article investigates the association between place-based deprivation and fairness evaluations with political trust in Germany. Using geocoded surveys from 2021 with 10,000 respondents nested in 5000 1 km2 neighbourhood grid cells across 300 municipalities, the study links attitudes to local economic hardship, service access and rurality. Results show that objective deprivation has modest associations with trust, while perceived unfairness is the strongest correlate. These factors operate largely independently, highlighting a spatial decoupling between material conditions and normative evaluations.