<p>This study examines the associations among risk perception, institutional trust, generalized trust, and life satisfaction by testing parallel and serial mediation models. Despite improvements in objective safety indicators, citizens’ subjective sense of security has not increased proportionally, raising questions about the psychosocial pathways linking risk perception to well-being. Using structural equation modeling with data from 36,280 Seoul residents, the study tests a multiple mediation model encompassing direct, parallel, and serial indirect pathways. The results indicate that risk perception is directly and negatively associated with life satisfaction and also indirectly associated with life satisfaction through both institutional trust and generalized trust. The findings suggest that institutional trust constitutes a substantially more prominent indirect pathway than generalized trust. Serial mediation analysis further reveals that institutional trust is significantly associated with generalized trust, consistent with the institutional primacy perspective. These findings suggest that risk perception operates through a multi-layered social process rather than solely as an individual psychological phenomenon. The study highlights the potential relevance of risk governance approaches that address transparent risk communication, institutional trust building, and social capital development. By integrating research on risk perception, trust, and life satisfaction, it proposes an analytical framework for understanding how subjective security perceptions are associated with citizen well-being in contemporary risk societies.</p>