The Impact of Immigration on Social Trust of Natives: Evidence from the Mass Migration in China
研究中国大规模人口流动下移民对本地居民信任的影响,发现移民显著降低本地人信任,弱关系受冲击大于强关系,低技能移民影响更明显,更优公共服务可缓冲该效应,对移民经济社会影响和政策研究者有参考价值。
This paper examines the impact of immigration on natives' social trust in the context of China's mass internal migration. Combining individual-level information on social trust and county-level information on immigration rate, we employ the instrumental variable strategy and find that immigration has a significant negative impact on trust among native residents. The impact of immigration on trust is more salient for trust in weak ties than trust in strong ties, and from a compositional perspective, the impact of low-skilled immigrants is more salient than that of high-skilled immigrants. Additional analyses suggest that better public services can buffer the impact of immigration on trust, implying a key role in public policy.