Blame, trust, and public cooperation in child protection: a comparative compositional survey analysis of nine societies

Abstract

Child-protection agencies depend on community members to recognize suspected maltreatment and contact formal services, yet the attitudes associated with such cooperation remain insufficiently understood across societies. Drawing on public-use cross-sectional survey data from 2,722 adult online-panel respondents in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this study examines willingness to contact services, beliefs that contact serves children’s and parents’ interests, and a three-item cooperation-orientation index. Society-adjusted regression models jointly evaluate institutional trust and knowledge, perceived response capability, perceptions of staff warmth and competence, expertise expectations, punitive attitudes, media exposure, perceived self–other differences in staff evaluations, and responsibility attribution. Because responsibility allocations were constrained to a fixed total, they were modeled using log-ratio contrasts rather than as independent percentages. Across outcomes, more favorable cooperation orientations were most consistently associated with greater perceived response capability, more favorable perceptions of staff warmth, stronger expectations of professional expertise, and greater support for harsher criminal sanctions. Institutional trust and knowledge were less consistently associated with the outcomes. Cooperation orientations were lower among respondents who assigned relatively more responsibility to public organizations and society than to perpetrators, whereas media exposure and perceived self–other differences in staff evaluations showed weak associations. These findings motivate experimental and longitudinal research on procedural guidance, approachable staff communication, and explanations of professional roles in public cooperation with child-protection services.