Research On The Impact Of Corruption Perception On Political Participation

With the development of democratic politics,the enhancement of public awareness of participation and the advancement of network technology,political participation has gradually evolved into a "multi-dimensional,multi-space and multi-channel" political activity,breaking through the established spatial scope of traditional political participation and revolutionizing the form of political participation.The complexity of the environment,the rapidity of information dissemination and the invisibility of participation behaviors are a series of problems that mystify the exploration of the influencing factors of political participation,and more factors that may influence political participation should be included in the investigation.In previous studies,scholars have mainly focused on the economic,political,technical and social aspects that affect political participation,but seldom paid attention to the many micro elements that affect political participation,examining the impact of the public’s internal attitudes,perceptions,and performance on political participation.Among the many micro-factors,individual perceptions of corruption is an area that has rarely been addressed in previous studies,and how different levels of factors work together to influence individual political participation behavior needs to be further explored.Based on this,this study looks at the micro-levels that influence political participation,firstly,to investigate whether and how public perceptions of corruption influence political participation;secondly,to explore the cross-dimensional interactions between the micro-level and macro-level,and to investigate how the influences of each dimension work together to influence individuals’ political participation activities.At the micro level,this study uses data from the seventh wave of the World Values Survey(WVS),and at the macro level,this study uses data from the World Bank,the GWF Autocratic Regime Date,and the IMF.Through the combination of micro and macro levels,we use empirical research to investigate whether perceptions of corruption affect political participation and the mechanisms and boundary conditions.The results show that: 1)Corruption perception has a significant effect on public political participation,and the higher the level of corruption perception the lower the likelihood of political participation.However,among the many categories of political participation,institutional political participation has the opposite result: the higher the public’s perception of corruption in the central government,the higher the likelihood of political participation,but the higher the perception of corruption in the local government has no significant effect on institutional political participation.2)Political trust mediates the effect of perception of corruption on political participation.Whether it is the perception of corruption in the central government or the perception of corruption in the local government,political trust plays a partially mediating role in its effect on all types of political participation.3)Economic performance,polity type and power distance play a moderating role in the impact of corruption perception on political participation,and there are differences in different types of political participation.