Interpersonal Trust of the Contemporary Urban Youth

Using data from the survey in 2011on China's social credit system,the paper studies the general characteristics the contemporary urban young people's interpersonal trust,and analyzes the specific features of different groups of the youth in all dimensions of the trust.The findings show that the interpersonal trust of the urban youth displays a differential mode of association which is highly consistent with the traditional Chinese rural society,that is,the highest level of trust is for family/relative relations,the acquaintance and long-term-basis working relationship takes the second place,and the lowest is for strangers.Particularly,the urban young people's trust for working relationship is higher than the one for acquaintances and strangers,which indicates that the research of the population's trust structure should not only take into account the characteristics of different relations and emotions,but also pay attention to the spatial and temporal characteristics of the interpersonal communication.From the comparison of the different groups,the interpersonal trust of male,unmarried,highly educated urban youth with larger income is higher than that of female,married ones with low education and low income.