The impact of individual unfair treatment on their evaluation to government performance: the chain mediating effect of social trust and life satisfaction

Dan Chen, Binjie Wang, Liang Xu, Yulong Tang

Background Government performance evaluation serves as a critical measure of governmental work. Individuals play a pivotal role in evaluating government performance. Their perceptions and assessments of government performance hold significant guiding implications for optimizing and adjusting governmental operations as well as planning objectives. Methods Based on the 2016 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) dataset, this study examined 13,410 residents to explore the influence mechanism of individual experiences of unfair treatment on government performance evaluation and assessed the chain mediating role of social trust and life satisfaction. Pearson correlation analysis and a sequential multiple mediation model were employed to examine the relationships among the variables. Results Individual experiences of unfair treatment predicted negatively their evaluation of the government performance. Furthermore, social trust and life satisfaction play a chain mediating role between unfair treatment and the evaluation of government performance. Conclusion The study shows that individuals’ experiences of unfairness can undermine social trust and reduce life satisfaction, which in turn diminishes the evaluation of government performance.