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Trust in the Government, Political Beliefs and its Impact on Energy Poverty
Benny, Nithin
Benny, Nithin
Date
2025-12
Author
Advisor
Type
Thesis
Degree
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33.232-2025.21a Nithin Benny.pdf
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Description
A Master of Business Administration (MBA) by Nithin Benny entitled, “Trust in the Government, Political Beliefs and its Impact on Energy Poverty”, submitted in December 2025. Thesis advisor is Dr. Sanket Roy and thesis co-advisor is Dr. Javed Younas. Soft copy is available (Thesis, Approval Signatures, Completion Certificate, and AUS Archives Consent Form).
Abstract
This thesis examines the relationship between Trust in the Government, Political Ideology, and Energy Poverty between developed and developing nations based on the panel data of World Values Survey and World Development Indicators. Energy poverty is determined using rates of Electricity access and the consumption per capita. The statistical investigation shows that there is a strong and evident international trend: the increase in electricity consumption is always associated with the self-positioning of the leftist ideology. This is a relationship that is very strong and stable in developing nations and continues (although in lesser intensity) in the richer nations. Conversely, simple access to electricity has no stable correlation with left right political position. Findings on the topic of institutional trust (Wolf) in the form of confidence in political parties and democratic support are exceedingly unstable across specifications and subsamples, with most coefficients changing radically in direction and magnitude, which is evidence of a high level of specification sensitivity as well as overfitting. This analysis does not result in trust as a reliable approach to energy poverty. Generally, the results imply that the high-energy abundance, in the form of the increased consumption but not the mere access, is tightly linked to the political ideology oriented to the left across the world, most prominently, not within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. An institutional trust and democratic attitudes, however, do not exhibit any consistent and credible impacts to the energy poverty reduction in the current research.