McCabe, 1995). Since then, there has been a growing body of work using experimental methods to measure trust, beliefs, and norms in di↵erent settings (see, e.g., Dufwenbergand Gneezy 2000; Burks, Carpenter, and Verhoogen 2003; and Johnson and Mislin 2011). Acemoglu and co-authors (2020) showed in an experimental setting that (truthful) information about reduced delays in state courts in rural Pakistan increases trust. Some researchers are now using a mixed method by applying the traditional trust game to large samples of respondents online (Aruguete, Calvo et al., 2021; Bejarano, Busso and Scartascini, 2021). A study by Murtin et al. (2018), combining an experimental design and a large-scale survey, bridged the two approaches and showed that self-reported measures of trust in institutions were validated experimentally.

This paper provides empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that processes were more important factors of trust than outcomes in the case of Morocco during the period studied. Results show that positive perceptions of the quality of policy processes correlate with institutional trust with more statistical significance and larger coefficients, and that the relation is more robust than the relation between satisfaction with policy outcomes and institutional trust. This is not to say that outcomes do not matter as we also find that policy outcomes – including positive perceptions of the delivery of public goods and services – are positively associated with Moroccan citizens’ trust in institutions. For example, citizens who are satisfied with the Government of Morrocco’s (GoM) economic policies or with service delivery are more likely to report higher levels of trust in institutions. Yet, institutional trust is even more strongly associated with the quality of public policy and service delivery processes, and in particular with positive perceptions of public integrity and policy credibility. For example, citizens who perceive that the GoM manages public resources in a transparent manner or that policy announcements are e↵ectively followed by actions are substantially more likely to trust institutions.

Given the nature of our dataset, which only captures a cross-section of trust-related data in Morocco, and the absence of an experimental or quasi-experimental element, the results presented in this paper have a limited capacity to identify a causal relation. To address this limitation to the maximum of our capability, we performed a range of robustness checks, checking our results against a large number of controls and alternative specifications. The findings also build on a growing body of evidence of recent policy research which argues that transparency, integrity and credibility are core drivers of trust (IADB 2022, Brezzi et al. 2021, Wang and Guan (2022), and Murtin et al 2018).

While our core finding relates to the pivotal role of policy performance and processes, our results also speak to the literature on individual-level determinants of trust, including social capital and socio-demographic characteristics. Studies have emphasized the importance of social and economic capital in explaining levels of institutional trust. Generalized social trust – the trust in individuals beyond one’s narrow community, embracing individuals for whom one has little prior information or moral claim – has been incentive to act opportunistically.

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