Public Trust in Political Leadership During COVID-19 Pandemic in Thailand

Sakda Nasongsi

doi:10.57260/csdj.2025.273182

Authors

Sakda Nasongsi Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nakhon Ratchasima Rajabhat University, Thailand

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.57260/csdj.2025.273182

Keywords:

Public trust, Political leadership, COVID-19

Abstract

This research aims to 1) study the desirable political leadership attributes that enable effective leaders to manage COVID-19 crises in Thailand, 2) survey and identify the level of public trust in 2 Thai political leaders. The prime minister and the minister of public health. The data was collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in Thailand between march – may 2021. The qualitative data was collected via semi-structured interviews with 20 persons; including university professors, politician, official servants, and analyzed by domain analysis and taxonomy. The quantitative data was collected by the online questionnaire distributed to 200 samplings; measured by means and standard deviation analysis. The research instrument was statistical analysis consisted of percentage, mean, standard deviation, t-test, One-way anova, least significance difference test and pearson product–moment correlation coefficient. The level of significance for statistical testing was 0.05. The reliability test was cronbach’s alpha at 0.70. The research findings suggest that, to be an effective leader during a crisis, political leaders need to be: visionary; courageous; calm; inspirational; ethical; empathetic; authentic; integrity; decision maker and resilient. For aspect of levels of public trust in political leadership, the average of public trust in the prime minister (PM) was at moderate level, visionary, clam and inspirational characteristics were at the lowest level. The minister of public health was at the lowest level, political leader’s integrity and visionary were slightly low. The implication of findings led to political policy-making about the public communication of policians.

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