Let's be honest

It may not seem like it, given the prevalence of scammers and con artists, but New Zealand is a high-trust country.

- MARC WILSON

This week’s reader question is whether the apparent increase in scams, con artists and general dishonesty is making us less trusting. Great question.

It’s hard to know what the impact of perceptions of increasing dishonesty is right now. Two reasons – it requires some pretty dynamic, large-scale longitudinal research, plus how do we disentangle potential scam effects from things that might also affect trust? For example, it’s possible that other events, such as the 2022 Parliament protests, could also affect how much people trust our government.

The OECD Trust Survey in 2021 canvassed trust indicators in New Zealand and another 21 OECD countries. It states “New Zealand is a high trust country”. It may not “feel” high trust that 55% of us trust public services, or that 47% trust Parliament, but we’re an average of about 5% more trusting than the OECD average for public service, and 8% more trusting for Parliament. We are consistently in the mid-top half of OECD nations.