Strong contract enforcement can either boost trust or erode it.
Contracts are often incomplete, and having more laws doesn't always make them work better. Researchers studied how enforceable contracts affect people's behavior. They found that strong or weak enforcement leads to better performance, but medium enforcement doesn't. Trust is more likely when enforcement is weak and less likely when it's medium. This was confirmed in a lab experiment, supporting the idea that trust and contract enforcement are important in certain countries.