Trust and Resource Distribution among Victims of Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan.

In this study, we tested moral economy thesis, consistent inequality thesis, the resource match thesis, and the social versus political trust issue after a catastrophic typhoon event. The 1st and 3rd waves of Social Impact and Recovery Survey of Typhoon Morakot of National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction in Taiwan were used for analysis. Among four social-economic status variables tested, only ethnicity supported the moral economy thesis and the consistent inequality thesis. Education, age, and income did not support these two assumptions. The resource match thesis was supported especially for the time right after a disaster because most victims were in an urgent need to recover. In the 3rd wave, resource match was still more important than resource gain or loss for defining trust scores on lower level of governments but resource gain became the most important variable for trust scores on higher level of governments and large NGOs. As for the social versus political trust issue, result finds that the 1st wave data supported the assumption that people's trust on large NGOs (a type of social trust) was more similar to trust on lower level governments than on higher level government (political trust on different level of governments). This result also reminded us heterogeneity in the concept of political trust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]