Research On The Impact Of Social Trust Level In Corruption

Corruption is a global problem, which would hinder economic development andthreaten the social harmony and stabilization; so it is imperative to tackle corruption. But inthe case that many governments increase anti-corruption efforts, why does the the questionof corruption get worse rather than be curbed. Extensive researches have been carried outby many scholars for the problem. To Prevent and control corruption right from their veryorigins requires precisely to the comprehensive research of factors affecting the formationof corruption and the grasp of the regularity of the corruption. In the author’s opinion, thereis not yet to relevant Literatures about the impact of social trust on corruption from socialand cultural perspective.In the paper, corruption and trust datas form95countries and regions during15yearsfrom1994to2008have been adopted to discuss the impact of social trust on corruptionwith the social trust as the breakthrough point. At the same time, we also classified differentcountries based on the level of economic development, religious culture and geographicalposition classification and explored the differences on the impact of various factors oncorruption under different backgrounds via a regression analysis.By conducting a regression analysis model,We found that there is a significantnegative correlation between the level of social trust and corruption. However, oncedifferent countries were classified based on the level of economic development, religiousculture and geographical position, we found that the impact of social trust on corruptionwould be some different in these countries: Although social trust all has a significantnegative influence on corruption in developed, developing and undeveloped countries; thebiggest effect exists in developed countries while minimal impact exists in undevelopedcountries. Social trust has a significant negative influence on corruption among Orthodoxand other religious countries, social trust has a significantly positive effect on corruptionamong Protestant countries, and the influence is no so significant among Catholicism andIslam countries. there is a significantly negative correlation between the level of social trustand corruption among European, African and American countries while the effect is not sosignificant among Asian countries.