scholarly journals Does Diversity Undermine Trust and Cooperation? Theory and Evidence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Giani ◽  
Shaun Hargreaves Heap ◽  
Dimitrios Minos
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Observational Data ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Theoretical Reason ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Social

Abstract. It is often argued that diversity depletes the social capital of trust and cooperation. We argue there is no compelling theoretical reason for supposing that trust and cooperation will move together in response to diversity; and we provide new causal evidence that they do not. While diversity undermines trust, we find that people in more diverse societies are, surprisingly, better able to cooperate in both new aggregate and individual level observational data and in laboratory experiments. These results caution against the suggestion that diversity creates trade-offs for society: e.g. between innovativeness and solidarity or between freedom of movement and welfare state generosity.

Small Town Services and Facilities: The Influence of Social Networks and Civic Structure on Perceptions of Quality

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 102-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lois Wright Morton
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Public Facilities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Civic Structure ◽  
The Town

In this research, it is posited that perceptions of the quality of services and facilities in small towns are dependent on the social organization of those places. Two components of this social organization are the social capital that inheres among individuals and the civic structure of the town. This hypothesis is tested using multi‐level models that combine individual‐level social capital and community‐level civic structure to explain variations among 99 rural towns in Iowa. I find that civic structure contributes positively and significantly to effects between communities, while individual‐level social capital is positive and a significant contributor to effects within communities. The civic structure models explain 32 percent of the variance in perceptions of the quality of core public facilities and services and 43 percent of the variance in secondary public‐private services. The strong contributions of individual social capital and civic structure suggest that investments in the micro and macro social structure of small towns can assist in strengthening perceptions of community infrastructure.

scholarly journals United in Diversity? An Empirical Investigation on Europe's Regional Social Capital

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Braesemann ◽  
Fabian Stephany
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Data Science ◽  
Classification Tree ◽  
Current Data ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Factor Analysis Model ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Landscape

Aiming to explain the European divide with respect to social and political values, scholars in the past have relied on a simplified four- (or even two-) dimensional regime model which tranches the continent according to the social capacities of its inhabitants. This "cartography" of "Social Europe" proves to be outdated by the results presented in this study which re-measures the social capital landscape in Europe. In this work, we apply a factor analysis model to the most commonly used approximations of social capital on the European Social Survey.In addition, we explore, as a novelty in social capital literature, a classification tree to model generalized trust. The analysis shows that three distinct dimensions of social capital measures are important in Europe: additionally to generalised social capital, which is usually approximated by generalised trust, there is one dimension of civic engagement and one of communitarian values. This distinction leads to a new social landscape of Europe, which highlights the relevance of considering regional and cross-border clusters in all relevant social capital dimensions.The results of the non-parametric model reveal that Protestantism and education are good benchmarks to classify trust on an individual level. Based on these findings we argue for the necessity of policies with a regional focus that take the different sub-national structures of social capacity in Europe into account. We re-measure the European Social Capital landscape using current data and provide a novel non-parametrical statistical method from data science for this purpose.

Social capital inequality and capital structure of new firms in a developing country: the role of bank ties

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vi Dung Ngo ◽  
Quang Evansluong ◽  
Frank Janssen ◽  
Duc Khuong Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Moderating Effects ◽  
New Firms ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Manufacturing Enterprises ◽  
Business Association ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

PurposeThis article aims to clarify the role of social capital and social capital inequality embedded in bank ties in enabling and diversifying new firms' debt use.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts a quantitative method, using an unbalanced longitudinal dataset covering three years–2011, 2013 and 2015–from a project on small manufacturing enterprises in Vietnam. The sample consists of 513 firm-year observations.FindingsNetwork extensity and network mobilisation increase new firms' debt use. Differences in ascribed and attained social statuses (i.e. gender, generation, business association membership and political affiliation) result in social capital inequality between entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs who are of a younger generation, have higher levels of education and are not members of the Communist Party benefit less from social capital than those who are older, have less education and are party members.Originality/valueThe effects of access to and the use of the social capital embedded in bank ties on new firms' debt use are both studied. The sources of social capital inequality are investigated at the individual level through distinguishing ascribed and attained social statuses and explained by two mechanisms: capital deficit and return deficit. The moderating effects of social capital inequality are also examined.

Ecological and cross-level studies

2003 ◽  
pp. 97-110
Author(s):  
Jan Neeleman
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Common Mental Disorder ◽  
Added Value ◽  
Ecological Studies ◽  
Ecological Data ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
Level Information ◽  
History Of ◽  
Study Designs

Ecological studies differ from other study designs by having groups of individuals as their unit of analysis. Studying differences in risk factors between individuals cannot fully explain variations in the health of populations in different regions or over time, and ignores the fact that a population's health impacts on social functioning and collective economic performance (McMichael and Beaglehole 2000). Similarly, there is increasing interest on the impact of social capital, or those aspects of the social environment that promote cohesion and cooperation, which have been associated with improved health and other outcomes. For example, a recent study found higher rates of common mental disorder among British women living in areas of low social capital (McCulloch 2001). Thus ecological associations can be analysed to gain insight into aetiological mechanisms at the level of individuals (cross-level inference), although there is ongoing debate about whether ecological analyses can add to insights obtained from studies of individual persons. Kasl (1979) stated that ‘ecological analyses lead to results which, in themselves, are opaque, unhelpful, potentially misleading’. Others emphasize that population health is more than the sum of the health of individual population members, and that therefore, ecological studies have a separate role alongside individual-level epidemiological research (Rose 1992). This chapter summarizes the principles and the place of ecological studies in the history of epidemiology, and the distinguishing properties of ecological data. After a description of ecological study designs and their analysis, the chapter argues that ecological data have added value even if individual-level information is available on the associations of interest.

The embodiment of social capital at individual and communal levels

2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (9/10) ◽  
pp. 812-830
Author(s):  
Anson Au
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Social Exchanges ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Dynamics Of Action

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the study of social capital focused on the level at which it is embodied, cross-comparing two prominent camps that have emerged in the social capital literature: a communal level and an individual level. Design/methodology/approach This paper reviews the intersections and departures between communal level and individual level conceptualizations of social capital according to the social dynamics of action within social exchanges that they stimulate, the processes by which social capital is activated/mobilized and the rewards they yield, and their linkages to inequality through network diversity. Findings This paper articulates new directions for future research in social capital: more analytical precision for studying returns to social capital; more efforts to transcend the individual-communal divide; the depreciation of social capital or tie decay; and recognizing the importance of ties whose value does not come from the ability to provide instrumental gain, but just from their very existence. Originality/value Social capital has informed many influential agendas in the social sciences, but the sheer volume of which has largely gone unscoped. This paper reviews this literature to provide an accessible introduction to social capital, organized by social processes foundational to sociology and a novel contribution to the literature by articulating new directions for future research in the area.

scholarly journals Factors Affecting Happiness

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-114
Author(s):  
Yew-Kwang Ng
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Environmental Quality ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Social Level

AbstractMany factors may affect happiness, including how our needs (including the five levels identified by Maslow) are satisfied. Four important F’s for happiness at the individual level are: faith, form/fitness, family, and friends. At the social level, important factors include environmental quality, equality, social capital (including trust).

Public Opinion and the Politics of Social Investment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius R. Busemeyer
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Investment Project ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Education Spending ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Original Dataset ◽  
The Social ◽  
Educational Investments ◽  
The Welfare State

Existing survey data on the public’s opinion on education policy usually finds large majorities in support of more educational investments. And yet, in many countries, actual levels of public spending on education remain stagnant. Making use of a new and original dataset on public opinion in eight European countries, this chapter provides a partial answer to this puzzle. In particular, it finds that popular support for more education spending drops significantly once citizens are confronted with the necessity of cutbacks in other parts of the welfare state (such as pensions or unemployment benefits). The conclusion is that the social investment project might face considerable political resistance if the more traditional parts of the welfare state are threatened. On the plus side, there is also evidence for a continued support for education even when citizens are confronted with the reality of political and fiscal trade-offs.

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