The non‐linear impact of corruption investigations on political trust

Abstract Trust in political institutions and their officials is crucial for implementing policies, enacting reforms, and facilitating collective action. This paper examines how corruption investigations influence trust in local cadres. Using data from China's anti‐corruption campaign, which increased corruption case disclosures, we find positive signals about checks and balances outweigh negative ones only when corruption cases are few. However, as investigations increase, trust diminishes due to heightened perceptions of corruption and lower evaluations of local governments, especially among those who lacked prior beliefs about local corruption levels before the campaign.