| dc.description.abstract | In recent decades, natural disaster frequency and magnitude have been steadily increasing, while climate change continues to be a topic mixed with facts and opinions. The vast majority of researchers are in consensus that climate change is happening and that one of the direct consequences are extreme weather events. Still, few things are as divisive politicallyasthediscussionofclimatechangeandthepossible, ifnotplausible, effects. This begs the question; how does this affect the general population’s trust towards politicians, political parties and governments? What happens to political trust?
To investigate this, we have constructed a fixed effects model at province level over 6 study periods from 2004-2014. 243 natural disasters affecting 132 different provinces over 8 countries were analyzed with the aim to investigate if weather-related natural disasters and natural disaster frequency have an impact on political trust in Central America, Mexico and Colombia. This is one of the very few studies that uses panel data to investigate multiple disasters in several countries over a number of years, instead of focusing on single disaster events like most of the current literature on natural disasters and political trust. Although no statistically significant general effects on political trust were found in this study, a potential weak positive effect when frequency is low, and a weak negative effect when frequency is high as opposed to no disaster event, was found. | nb_NO |
