The Relationship between Economic and Social Trust:Taking Four Counties (Districts) in Guangdong as examples

Four counties (districts) in Guangdong are the examples of the study. The study through reviewing literature, annual financial data, questionnaires and surveys reveals the relationship between economic development and social trust. Based on the study of the data, we found that the trust levels of the counties were mediocre; regional economic development level and the level of trust showed a certain degree positive correlation. Overall, some factors such as income, education, occupation had an impact on the trust, whether it is better for economic development or a relatively weak region. Besides, we found that economy have a strong impact on specific trust. General trust is not obvious, however. Within this context, we try to think about the relationship between the economic development and trust promotion and try to change the low trust level. Keywords—Regional economic development; individual income; social trust I. RESEARCH QUESTIONS Social intercourse activity between people is the essence of the constitution of society; while social trust is the basic condition and adhesive of social intercourse activity. Once two more people make exchanges voluntarily, there should also be social trust to certain degree. According to the study, as a social asset, social trust is promoting the economic development and with the enhancement of social trust, the general benefits of the whole society will also increase accordingly; Other researches suggest that economic development will also pose influence to social trust to a certain degree. Volcker Bonscher makes comparative researches to the social trust level and wealth in developed market economy country and emerging industrial country in the thesis Culture and Politics in Economic Development and holds that the more wealth a country owns, the higher its trust level will be; social trust level and wealth level develop consistently. “ After 30-over years’ reform and opening up, China’s economic development witness amazing achievements around the world and people’s economic and living standards realize an evident increase; Whereas, international society generally considers that China is a society lacking social trust resources. This thesis takes four counties (districts) in different development level in Guangdong as the subjects of the study to analyze the relations between countylevel economic development, personal income and social trust and further discuss the strategy to enhance social trust. II. LITERATURE REVIEW As early as 1950s, trust had already drawn the attraction of foreign scholars. Georg Simmel pointed out in the book The Philosophy of Money that trust was an extremely important social force. Luhmann considers trust as the most important and simplified mechanism of the sophistication in the modern society and considers trust as the confidence to someone’s expectation which simplifies sophistication. [3] The relation between social trust and economy also becomes the focus of scholars. Robert D. Rutnam points out that trust is the core of moral principles and plays a role in maintaining economy. [4] Francis Fukuyama points out trust’s influence in economic benefits and economic growth and trust can promote economic growth. [5]Whiteley (2000)[6], Nike and Jevo (1996) [7] all make researches on trust’s influence in economy under the social assets on the state level and find that the higher trust level a region owns, the higher the economic growth rate and investment volume will be. Jappelli & Pagano point out that the reverse choice and moral risks in trading will decline due to information sharing and the high trust level between trading parties will also promote economic development and the enlargement of loan scale. [8] Researches on the factors influencing social trust are mainly as follows: (1)Social trust is influenced by social structure. Scholar Luhman (1979) [9] points out that trust structure is correlated with the social vicissitudes and trust and lead to the appearance of the interpersonal trust and system trust; Zucker (1986) points out that the improvement of reputation, personal features and established legal and social systems will lead to a higher trust level [10]; Selgman (1997) expresses through researches that trust originates from social relations and social systems and accepts the integration and maintenance of both of them [11]. Innovation in Regional Public Service for Sustainability (ICPM 2016) © 2016. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 1 (2)Interpersonal relation is the guiding factor of trust, Lewis &Weigert et al. (1985) point out that the pattern of manifestation is determined by rational calculation and sensational factors in interpersonal relations;. [12] It is also found that personal experiences, social regulations [13] and national credibility [14]will also pose influences to trust. The researches on social trust domestically are mainly concentrated in two aspects: (1)Researches on the relations between social trust and regional economy. Zhang Weiyang carries out that research on trust’s influence in economy between units lower than provincial regional level. [15] Pan Fenghua and He Canfei make researches on the relations between them through the replacement index, the community and find that social trust is an important factor for regional economic development. [16] Wang Wensheng(2009)finds through reseaches on relevant data that compared with cities, rural areas have a higher trust level. [17] Furthermore, Zhang Junsheng (2005)[18] and Lu Yanping (2005) [19] point out that social assets are in the positive correlation to regional finance based on provincial-level data. (2)Researches on the factors influencing trust. Zhang Yunwu (2009) carries out researches through the features of interpersonal trust in different regions and scales and discusses the relation between the scale of social networks and trust. [20]Hu Rong and Li Jingya find that personal features of and community attendance of residents are the major factors influencing trust after researches; [21] Li Weimin and Liang Yucheng point out through investigations that although blood relationship is the major factor influencing the interpersonal trust of Chinese people, however emotional connotation also poses an important influence, instead of the prejudice of foreign scholars hold that blood relationship determines trust; [22]Moreover, other scholars point out that the social features of objectives like occupation, education level are also closely related to its trust level. [23][24] As a conclusion, the recent researches are mainly concentrated on social trust’s influence in economy or other factors’ influence in social trust, while few researches focus on how economic factors influence social trust. Based on this, this thesis investigates the influence of county-level economic development and individual income in social trust from county society level. III. RESEARCH DESIGN