Tavarandu is a participatory governance program that promotes capacity building for citizen participation in local governments and communities. While our passion for citizen engagement is all we need to invest in these initiatives, we also want to test new methods and tools and learn about their impacts. In particular, we know that there is an interdependent relationship between citizens' trust in their institutions and participation, and the greater that trust, the greater the quality of democracy. And care for our democracies is another reason we invest in participation. Our hypothesis is simple: if municipal officials, trained in participatory governance, facilitate citizen engagement activities in their communities, then citizens' trust in institutions will increase, and with this, democracy and the possibility of development and welfare.

But how do we measure that trust? Do we ask each citizen how much they trust their local government? It is an option, and we have done it in the past to measure trust and social capital, but there is a much more fun way to do it: by playing!

The Public Goods Game: measuring the perception of trust in local government 

The fun way comes from the world of game theory. Through a Public Goods Game, we seek to simulate a real scenario in which participating people must make decisions that reflect their levels of trust and valuation of public goods. Thus, we can collect the information we need to measure whether training in participatory methods for municipal officials and their application, by the same municipal official, with groups of adolescents, increases, or not, confidence in municipal planning processes and their local government. Our local version of the public goods game is built with banknotes from a local version of the traditional game Monopoly. 

In the relationship between citizens and government, trust plays a crucial role in the way people interact and perceive government actions. Research has found that social norms (the relevance given to reciprocity and altruism), group affiliations, and past interactions influence individual decisions and perceptions, and the formation and maintenance of trust. 

In our intervention, we measured trust through the money that participating people would be willing to invest in public goods that are managed by the municipality. We adapted an investment game used in economic studies with scenarios where citizens "invest" their trust in actions such as paying taxes or contributing time for common goods, evaluating how the characteristics of the environment and government policies affect trust. The trust in public goods game helped us study how individuals make decisions in situations where cooperation can benefit the collective, but also presents a dilemma for the individual between acting selfishly, prioritizing their individual interest; or in a cooperative way, assuming a greater individual risk for a greater collective well-being. 

According to several studies trust is supported by motivations and underlying factors, such as the perception of reciprocity, the history of previous interactions, and the perception of justice. People are more likely to trust if they perceive the same intention in their counterparts, if on previous occasions they have already acted in a similar way and were satisfied, and if the cause in which they place their trust seems valuable to them. These drivers of trust are in turn influenced by cultural, historical, and personal aspects.