Objective/Meaning The frequent impact of natural disasters has directly or indirectly affected the social stability and people’s production and life. The effective emergency response and post-disaster reconstruction of the government may provide important opportunities for the government to resolve the disaster risks and create a new image, thereby enhancing the legitimacy of the regime in the state of emergency.

Methods/Procedures Based on the data of the China Family Panel Studies in 2014, 2016 and 2018, the impact of natural disasters on the trust of rural residents in local governments was empirically tested through the two-way fixed effect model.

Results/Conclusions It was found that the level of trust of rural residents in local governments has been significantly improved under the impact of long-term natural disasters. Under the impact of short-term natural disasters, the level of trust of rural residents in local governments would increase significantly, but it was difficult to maintain for a long time, and even would fall back to the normal levels. The heterogeneity analysis showed that the impact of disasters which were closely related to the production and life of rural residents, such as the flood and drought disasters, biological disasters, earthquake disasters, and geological disasters, has strengthened the trust of rural residents in local governments.