Legacies of past institutionalized political discrimination reverberate in present-day patterns of commercial drinking water consumption. We investigate several case studies – redlining, the Voting Rights Act implementation in North Carolina, institutionalized neglect in Appalachia, and political marginalization of Hispanics in the Southwest – to illustrate the relationship between moral distrust of government and citizen-consumer behavior. We find that areas redlined in the 1930s are more likely to host present-day water kiosks. Parts of North Carolina protected by the Voting Rights Act in 1965 have lower present-day bottled water sales than unprotected areas. Counties located within Appalachia have higher bottled water sales than counties outside of Appalachia. Water kiosks in the Southwest today are most likely to be located in predominantly Hispanic communities. Commercial water companies capitalize upon these legacies of moral distrust to market commercial water products to politically marginalized populations. “Cultural” preferences for commercial water stem from citizen-consumers’ beliefs about the competence and morality of government.

This chapter advances a theory of the citizen-consumer that connects the quality of basic services to trust in government, trust in government to consumer behavior, consumer behavior to citizen political participation, and citizen political participation back to the quality of basic services. When basic services are sound, citizens trust the institutions of government; when basic services fail, citizens distrust those same institutions. People who trust government rely on public services, whereas those who distrust government opt instead for more expensive commercial alternatives. This distrust premium is pure profit to government’s commercial competitors and is paid disproportionately by the politically marginalized. Consumers who use public services have a strong interest in safeguarding quality, so they are politically active citizens, demanding high-quality public services. Consumers who abandon public services in favor of commercial firms withdraw from political life. These distrustful, disengaged citizens demand little from government and oppose public investments. Starved of resources and attention, governments’ service quality declines and a vicious cycle of distrust ensues.

This chapter examines the relationship between moral trust in government and the choice of citizen-consumers to exercise voice and exit. We find that when faced with tap water failure, ethnic and racial minorities are less likely to voice their concerns to utilities due to their historical marginalization in the United States. This disparity in the likelihood of exercising voice is most prevalent among poor populations, with the effect especially pronounced among Hispanics. Further, we find that citizen-consumers who lack moral trust in government are more likely to consume bottled water, signifying exit from publicly provided services. Exit from public services has downstream political effects. Citizen-consumers who drink bottled water are less likely to engage in politics. As bottled water consumption increases, voting rates decrease. The consequences of declining trust in government and the turn away from public services strikes at the heart of democracy itself. When individuals do not trust government to provide basic services, there is little reason for them to engage in public life more broadly.