The Effect Of Interpersonal Consumption On Relational Trust In Rural China:Theoretical Analysis And Empirical Evidence

With the intrusion of modernization and the impact of market economy,China’s rural areas are undergoing great changes that have not been seen in a century.Renqing rooted in rural China is gradually declining and interpersonal interaction appears the trend of alienation.Furthermore,the relational trust is quietly changing in this process.In the context of China’s Rural Revitalization policy,mitigating the alienation of interpersonal consumption in rural areas and creating a trust ecosystem of friendly and pure rural relations are of great significance to enhance the internal governance ability,improve the overall welfare level of villagers and establish a new rural development pattern.Based on the changing acquaintance society,this paper takes individual relationship as the basic unit of relational trust and is to reinterpret and then reconstruct the causal relationships and action paths of rural interpersonal consumption on relational trust.The study introduces the social preference theory into the trust game model,and demonstrates three action paths of rural interpersonal consumption affecting relational trust from the discussion of sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium: insider development,social competition and mutual assistance.Subsequently,we expound the dynamic evolution logic of interpersonal consumption and relational trust by analyzing typical cases.The empirical tests are carried out by using the China Family Panel Studies（CFPS,2014-2018）.The results show that: first,rural interpersonal consumption has a significant inverted U-shaped impact on relational trust.More specifically,rural interpersonal consumption in a certain range can promote the increase of relational trust while beyond a certain range,the increase of rural interpersonal consumption tends to reduce relational trust.This estimated impact is robust to a series of hidden bias regarding sample selection,estimation method,variable measurement,missing variables and endogeneity.Further discussion illustrates that the inflection point value of rural families’ per capita annual interpersonal consumption is 3077 yuan.Second,the non-linear impact of rural interpersonal consumption on relational trust is mainly reflected in the young,low education level,high part-time employment level and low-income rural residents in the East and Midland of China.Third,rural interpersonal consumption indirectly affects relational trust mainly through the social competition mechanism: the social competition caused by the alienation of interpersonal consumption stimulates people’s inequality-aversion preference,which makes the trust of rural residents experience an inverted U-shaped change track of first increasing and then decreasing.In summary,developing the trust game model in the framework of social preference theory,this study effectively identifies the causal relationships and action paths of rural interpersonal consumption on relational trust by combining with typical case analysis and empirical research.The explanation and response to this issue not only has certain theoretical value because of enriching the relevant achievements of rural social capital and constructing the research framework of relational trust,but also provides important theoretical support for alleviating the renqing crisis of rural residents and advocating rational rural interpersonal consumption and creating a friendly and pure relational trust ecosystem.