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.

High-profile water contamination crises like the one in Flint, Michigan, shake confidence in US water systems. This chapter examines the links between tap water failure, reduced trust in utilities and government, and increased demand for commercial water. We show that negative experiences with basic service quality erode overall trust in government and increase demand for private alternatives. Analyses of data from three independent national surveys demonstrate that individuals who experience problems with their local water such as dirty, bad-tasting, or low-pressure water service also report lower trust in local, state, and federal government. The relationship between water service quality and trust in government persists after controlling for party identification, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. We also find that tap water failure correlates with increased demand for commercial water sold from water kiosks, privately owned commercial water vendors. Taken together, these findings suggest that basic service failure erodes performative trust in government and increases demand for commercial drinking water.

Distrust in government is contagious. Awareness of drinking water problems can lead the public to distrust their own local water supply, even when people do not personally experience basic service failure. For examlple, lead-testing requests increased dramatically in Providence, Rhode Island, following the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. This chapter examines the ways that water quality problems in one water utility affect customer behavior in other communities. Using an SLX spatial econometric modeling strategy, we show that communities’ demand for commercial water increases in response to other communities’ tap water problems when the communities are demographically and/or socioeconomically alike. Notably, these “spillover” effects are strongest for communities that are socially similar: The physical distance between communities does not affect demand for commercial drinking water in the same way. These findings indicate that problems with tap water anywhere have the potential to cause distrust of tap water everywhere.