Knowledge, attitudes and trust in the ECB
Public trust is fundamental for central banks, as it enhances the effectiveness of their policies. Much of the economic literature has focused on how demographics and socio-economic factors affect the public’s trust in central banks. In this paper, Angino et al. take a different approach and instead explore how cognitive processes affect trust. In particular, they differentiate between “instinctive trust”, which captures an on-the-spot judgement on the institution’s trustworthiness, and of “reflective trust”, which refers to a more pondered opinion on the matter. They then use a survey experiment which randomized the position of the question on trust in the ECB at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of our questionnaire, and studied the evolution of the response rate and of the level of trust. They find:
The results of this analysis indicate that deeper consideration about the ECB is associated with less trust in the institution compared to an on-the-spot judgement, and that this is the case particularly for women with low perceived knowledge of the ECB.
Instinctive versus reflective trust in the European Central Bank
Authors: Siria Angino, Stefania Secola
From: ECB
Which central banks are trusted by the public
In this literature review, Blinder et al. look at what research shows about how much central banks are trusted in different countries.
- Trust in the ECB declined substantially after the global financial crisis and recovered only slowly;
- A negative trend in the net satisfaction of British citizens with the Bank of England, started to improve again in late 2012;
- Public confidence in the Bank of Japan started from very low levels in 2004 but has been trending upward ever since;
- Trust in the Federal Reserve is low: at the beginning of 2021, slightly less than 40 percent of Americans had a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the U.S. central bank.
In view of the importance that central banks attach to public trust, there is remarkably little research on the effect of transparency and communication on trust. The few studies that do exist suggest, though not unequivocally, that transparency enhances trust in the central bank.
Central Bank Communication with the General Public: Promise or False Hope?
Authors: Alan S. Blinder, Michael Ehrmann, Jakob de Haan
From: Princeton University, European Central Bank, University of Groningen
