Exposure to Images of Mafia Violence Increases Trust in the State
The number of homicides in Italy today is one-third of those twenty years ago, yet Italians believe they have increased by 26.6%, with a 17.3% rise in mafia-related murders. Moreover, when exposed to images of mafia violence from newspapers, Italians do not tend to lose trust in the state, as studies in other countries would suggest. Instead, they tend to have more trust in institutions and offer a more positive judgment of their quality and performance.
Gianmarco Daniele and Paolo Pinotti from the CLEAN Unit for the Economic Analysis of Crime at Bocconi observe these behaviors through an experimental study of 5,374 individuals residing in Italy, conducted with Gian Maria Campedelli and Andrea Martinangeli, published in the Journal of Public Economics.