Making Civic Trust Less Abstract: A Framework for Measuring Trust Within Cities

Civic trust is essential for strong, functional communities and effective governments. It gives institutions the license to operate. It allows people to form relationships within their communities.

However, trust is also abstract and little understood. It is difficult to define and even more difficult to quantify. For city leaders, this presents a conundrum: How can they act to improve civic trust if they don’t fully understand what it looks like?

The GovLab, together with the New York City Civic Engagement Commission, has sought to answer this question through its latest publication: Making Civic Trust Less Abstract: A Framework for Measuring Trust Within Cities.

This report proposes a practical framework for city officials to diagnose and strengthen civic trust through observable indicators and actionable interventions. Rather than attempting to quantify trust as an abstract concept, the framework distinguishes between the drivers of trust — direct experiences and institutional interventions — and its manifestations, both emotional and behavioral.

This content is then followed by an Implementation Framework, a guide intended to help government officials design specific interventions that can mitigate or reinforce certain behaviors or emotions. Drawing on literature reviews, expert workshops, and field engagement with the New York City Civic Engagement Commission (CEC), the report presents a three-phase approach: (1) baseline assessment of trust indicators, (2) analysis of causal drivers, and (3) design and continuous evaluation of targeted interventions.

The framework is demonstrated through a hypothetical case study exploring the implementation in a municipal parks department, and a real-world case study of the citywide participatory budgeting initiative, The People’s Money.

It concludes with an interactive checklist of behavioral indicators, trust drivers, possible interventions, and context-specific considerations for different agencies;

Read the full report HERE.

For questions or feedback, please reach out to us at datastewards@thegovlab.org.