A New Dataset on Horizontal Structural Ethnic Inequalities in Thailand in Order to Address Sustainable Development Goal 10

The study accounts for the presence of endogeneity in the interdependence between social and institutional trust. Using Greece as a case study we provide valuable insights regarding the bidirectional nature of this relationship and its sign. Consequently, more accurate results might be provided regarding the determinants of both types of trust and the way in which these may be discerned in a given society. We use microdata extracted from the European Values Surveys (2002–2010) and instrumental variables techniques. Social trust is constructed as a three-item scale variable comprising generalized trust, fairness and helpfulness. The institutional trust variable is constructed as the sum of seven variables referring to trust in political institutions, civil security institutions and, supranational political institutions. In line with the hypothesis formed here, the results indicate the presence of endogeneity in the social and institutional trust interrelationship. When accounted for, this endogeneity entails different results as regards the sign of the effect that institutional trust exerts upon social trust, which turns from positive to negative. The study contributes to the limited empirical knowledge regarding the micro level two-way causal relationship between social trust and institutional trust. The study’s findings provides us with a more informative and accurate picture of the underlying dynamics of building trust in a society. Important research and policy level issues draw from these findings.

     

An Exploratory Study of Religion and Trust in Ghana

Based on individual-level data from 2008 Afro-barometer survey, this study explores the relationship between religion (religious affiliation and religious importance) and trust (interpersonal and institutional) among Ghanaians. Employing hierarchical multiple regression technique, our analyses reveal a positive relationship between religious affiliation and both measures of trust among Ghanaians. A positive relationship between Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Pentecostal/Evangelical faiths and interpersonal trust compared to non/traditional religion are detected. The data also reveal that upon controls, only Catholic and Pentecostal/Evangelical show significant positive effect on institutional trust among Ghanaians compared to non/traditional religion. It is worth noting that religious importance does not significantly predictor of neither interpersonal nor institutional trust among Ghanaians. The overall effect of religion on trust is weak, and weaker for institutional trust. Most of the difference relates to the difference between world religions and traditional religions. Place of residence, political affiliation, region of residence, ethnicity, and education are significant nonreligious predictors of both institution and interpersonal trust among Ghanaians. The findings further show that whereas age significantly influences only interpersonal trust, gender, life satisfaction, media exposure, sense of corruption, and sense of unfair treatment are significant factors molding institutional trust among Ghanaians. Policy implications of the study are discussed, emphasizing the need to incorporate religious organizations in efforts aimed at boosting interpersonal and institutional trust among Ghanaians. Religious-specific trust promotion program is suggested as possible strategy likely to succeed in Ghana. The need for more detailed studies in this important but ignored area is emphasized.     

Generalized Trust and Trust in Institutions in Confucian Asia

This study examines generalized trust and trust in institutions in Confucian Asia, covering six countries namely, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam, and one dependent region, Hong Kong. Using data from the 2006 AsiaBarometer Survey, our study affirms the reliability and validity of using a two-item scale to measure generalized trust. Our analysis suggests that due to demographic differences, there are variations in the level of generalized trust of countries in Confucian Asia, despite the fact that these societies share a similar background in Confucian philosophy. The relationships between generalized trust and political trust, and between generalized trust and trust in public institutions, are weak but positive. The positive relationship between generalized trust and trust in economic institutions is only significant for some of the economies, while trust in international institutions has the weakest relationship with generalized trust for all societies. We conclude the paper with research implications.     

Income Inequality and Subjective Well-being: A Cross-National Study on the Conditional Effects of Individual and National Characteristics

In this study we raise the question how a nation’s income inequality affects subjective well-being. Using information on 195,091 individuals from 85 different countries from the World Value Surveys and the European Value Surveys, we established that in general, people living in more unequal countries report higher well-being than people from more equal countries. This association however does not apply to all people similarly. First, the positive effect of a nation’s income inequality is weaker when individuals express more social and institutional trust, and underscore egalitarian norms to a larger extent. Second, the positive association between national income inequality and subjective well-being is less strong for people from countries with high levels of social and institutional trust. So, our research predominantly indicates that there are far-reaching effects of an individual’s and a nation’s trust on people’s well-being.     

In Social Capital We Trust?

It has been widely postulated in the literature that social capital is positively related to or is the same as trust. The present study presents three theoretical perspectives regarding how individual and organizational social capital may be related to network trust and generalized trust: the compositional element (Putnam), functional equivalence (Fukuyama), and mutual independence (Lin). To each of these perspectives we allocated distinct measures of individual and organizational network mechanisms considering their operational definition of social capital. Using nationally representative data sets from the United States and China, we developed a comparative research design through which the three perspectives were put into an empirical test. In conclusion, we found that the compositional element perspective is most prone to cross-national contingencies, whereas the mutual independence perspective is freer from such contextual influences. In particular, the positive association between number of membership in voluntary associations (organizational social capital) and generalized trust exists only in the United States, whereas individual social capital based on network diversity and resources is unrelated to generalized trust in neither country. Lastly, the functional equivalence perspective does not get empirical support from the data, particularly with regard to the proposed negative relationship between network closure and generalized trust. These findings challenge the assumptions concerning the positive association or equivalence between social capital and trust in the literature.

     

Intercultural Experience as an Impediment of Trust: Examining the Impact of Intercultural Experience and Social Trust Culture on Institutional Trust in Government

Government is an important institution in every society, but public trust in government has been declining worldwide. Like social trust, institutional trust in government manifests in two forms—goodwill-based (based on intentions and purposes) and competence-based (based on competence and performance). Using archival data of the AsiaBarometer (2004), I found a cross-level interaction effect of intercultural experience and social trust culture on goodwill-based, but not competence-based, institutional trust in government. Intercultural experience was negatively related to goodwill-based institutional trust in government within regions of low social trust but not within regions of high social trust. Both types of institutional trust in government within regions of high social trust were lower than those within regions of low social trust. Furthermore, both types of institutional trust in government were positively related to socioeconomic, public, and personal life satisfaction. These findings shed light on the tension between institutional trust in government and social trust as well as a government’s dilemma posed by intercultural experience.     

How Do Traditional Gender Roles Relate to Social Cohesion? Focus on Differences Between Women and Men

The aims of the present paper are to explore how traditional gender roles (focusing mainly on attitudes towards the division of labour between men and women) relate to social cohesion and to examine whether this relationship differs among men and women. The multi-dimensional concept of social cohesion is measured by two general components: a behavioural dimension (consisting of civic and political participation and the intensity of non-kin social relations) and an attitudinal dimension (institutional trust and solidarity). The analysis, based on the data of the European Values Study from Luxembourg, reveals that being more traditional is related to higher attitudinal cohesion: i.e. higher institutional trust and solidarity. Conversely, traditional attitudes are associated with less cohesive behaviour, namely with a lower intensity of non-kin social relations and political participation. Tradition-oriented women show significantly lower levels of political participation than their male counterparts, whereas traditional men tend to demonstrate less solidarity than women.     

Trust,Social Networks and Subjective Wellbeing in China

Using data from the World Values Survey, this study examines the associations among trust, social networks and subjective wellbeing in China. We address the endogenous nature of trust and social networks, and examine how these elements of social capital affect subjective wellbeing. We also explore the interplay between trust and social networks. Existing literature suggests that trust and social networks positively impact wellbeing, with one strand of the literature suggesting that in developed countries social capital is a stronger determinant of wellbeing than income. However, we find that this is not the case for China (a developing country) where the effects of trust and social networks on wellbeing are found to be relatively weaker compared to the effect of income.     

An Exploratory Study of Trust and Material Hardship in Ghana

We explore associations among interpersonal (thick and thin) and institutional (legislative, executive, and judicial) trust and material hardship outcomes in Ghana. We use data from the 2008 Afrobarometer survey. Material hardship is conceptualized in terms of frequency of going without five basic necessities/consumptive deprivations, each of which a separate outcome (food, water, medical care, cooking fuel, and cash income). Five multinomial logistic regression models are estimated. Models also include relevant socioeconomic and cultural factors. The stepwise forward entry method was used to identify important variables for each model, and common and unique predictors of each outcome are discussed. Results suggest that deprivations are trust-specific in Ghana. Interpersonal and institutional trust types matter differentially (for example, trust in parliament/national assembly is a unique food deprivation predictor; trust in courts is a unique water deprivation predictor; and trust in police is a unique cash income deprivation predictor). Common trust predictors across models are thin trust (trust in other Ghanaians) for predicting food and cooking fuel infrequency outcomes and executive trust for predicting water, medical care, and cash income infrequency outcomes. Some of the non-trust variables, like education and ethnicity, were prominent predictors of deprivation outcomes across all models. This is one of the beginning studies to explore micro-level data in an important area of trust and material hardship in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study also attempts to conceptualize material hardship within the context of a developing country and provides insightful results that could be beneficial to other research investigators and further probed in future studies building on this work. The study draws important implications for intervention policies based on analyses of material hardship composite parts which provide insights with great detail into specific target groups on specific component-outcomes.     

Political Distrust and Social Capital in Europe and the USA

Levels of rising political distrust in the USA and parts of Europe attracted political scientists’ attention in the 1990s, and urged them to look at possible consequences of this phenomenon for the functioning of democracies and social life. Approximately during the same period, from a sociological viewpoint, social capital theorists started studying the effects of declining social capital on political and economic life. In this article, we looked at the relationship between political distrust and social capital from an interdisciplinary perspective. We studied the relationship in six European countries from three regions (North-West, South and East), and the USA, and we were interested in the question of whether this relationship varies over the regions, or whether it is approximately the same everywhere. We used ISPP data from the 2004 wave, which included a range of social capital indicators and political distrust items. Social capital was subdivided into four dimensions, namely, networks (membership of organizations), interpersonal or social trust, social norms (citizenship norms), and linking social capital (political activities). First we studied the effect of political distrust on these four dimensions of social capital, while controlling for other variables such as political efficacy, political interest and a set of socio-structural background variables. One of our main findings was that the only significant effect of political distrust we found throughout all countries was a negative effect on one dimension of social capital, namely, interpersonal trust: the more people distrust politicians and people in government, the less they trust other people in general, even when controlled for all other variables. The reverse relationship led us to the same conclusion: the more people tend to trust people in general, the less they distrust politics, a result we found in all countries. This finding refutes the claim that there is no or either only a very weak relationship between political and social trust, as some have strongly argued before. Other important political attitudes connected to social capital were political interest and political efficacy, and for political distrust it was external efficacy. Significant socio-economic factors were religiousness and educational level for membership of voluntary organizations, educational level for interpersonal trust, religiousness for citizenship norms, and educational level and age for political activities. The reciprocal relationship was strongest in the USA and North-Western Europe, as were the explained variances of our (more extensive) regression models. In Southern and Eastern Europe other factors appear to be at work which influence both social capital and political distrust.     

On the Measurement of Interpersonal Trust Transfer: Proposal of Indexes

This paper investigates the measurement of trust transfer in interpersonal contexts. Despite the importance of this topic, little evidence of comparable indicators exists to fill the current gap in knowledge regarding the measurement of interpersonal transference of trust and its reciprocal. We propose a modification of the classical structure of a widely accepted experimental setting for analyzing trust (i.e. a trust game) and build two indexes for the measurement of trust transfer and its reciprocation. Several properties of these indicators are investigated to examine their robustness and accuracy for measuring the transference of interpersonal trust. Furthermore, using data from our own modified trust game, we provide an empirical examination of both indexes. The results show that the existence of a mutually known third party fosters a stronger willingness to achieve cooperative behavior in an anonymous trust game; thus, the transference of interpersonal trust works in both directions of the dyad.     

The Meaning of Trust for Brazilians with Higher Education

The validity of the World Values Survey (WVS) question used to measure trust is disputed over and this article is intended to present the results of an online survey, conducted in Brazil, which tested the meaning of the term trust in the WVS question. The surveyed population is entirely Brazilian and the majority has received some form of higher education. The results of the survey partially corroborate the validity of the WVS and partially deny it. Within the results of this survey there are predominantly two dominant perspectives represented within the surveyed population including: respondents who think in friends and relatives as part of most people have a higher probability of also saying to trust most people which means that different people may be answering slightly different questions. However, respondents who say that trust most people have higher levels of trust in people in general than in family if compared with respondents who say to not trust most people which is in accordance with the expectation that the question adequately measures generalized interpersonal trust.     

Land,Fertility, and the Population Establishment

Attempts to demonstrate the dependence of fertility decline in the Third World on radical change have often depended on simplistic statistical analyses. Here some of the data used to explore the relationship between fertility, and land size and ownership, are re-examined. It is concluded that the land-fertility hypotheses of Stokes and Schutjer are not supported by the evidence, but that such analyses are inherently inconclusive and ambiguous. Instead, an understanding of the wider institutional context is called for. The Population Establishment – foreign and international donors supporting population programmes and research – recruits an intelligentsia to validate its activities. The philosophy of this intelligentsia is examined and rejected through an analysis of ideas it derives from the World Fertility Survey and the Matlab family planning project. It is concluded that the Establishment perpetuates rapid population growth by legitimizing unpopular and elitist governments, and by misleading them to believe that fertility decline can, indeed, occur in a political economy of inequality and injustice.     

Can We Trust Measures of Political Trust? Assessing Measurement Equivalence in Diverse Regime Types

Do standard “trust in government” survey questions deliver measures which are reliable and equivalent in meaning across diverse regime types? I test for the measurement equivalence of political trust in a sample of 35 former Soviet and European countries using the 2010 Life in Transition Survey II conducted by the World Bank and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Employing multiple group confirmatory factor analysis, I find that trust perceptions in central political institutions differ from (1) trust in regional and local political institutions, (2) trust in protective institutions like the armed forces and police and (3) trust in order institutions like the courts and police. Four measurement models achieve partial metric invariance and two reach partial scalar invariance in most countries, allowing for comparisons of correlates using latent factors from each model. I also found some clustering of measurement error and variation in the dimensionality of political trust between democratic and autocratic portions of the sample. On some measurement parameters, therefore, respondents in diverse cultures and regime types do not have equivalent understandings of political trust. The findings offer both optimism and a note of caution for researchers using political trust measures in cross-regime contexts.     

Minority stress in same-sex male relationships: when does it impact relationship satisfaction?

The minority stress model (Meyer, 2003) has been proposed to explain higher rates of psychopathology in lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals. However, studies of minority stress have rarely taken into account the interface between minority stress and same-sex relationship processes. In the current study, 142 gay men in romantic relationships completed an online survey assessing minority stress constructs, relationship features, and relationship satisfaction. Minority stress was not directly related to relationship satisfaction, while commitment, trust, and support from one's partner were related to relationship satisfaction. Significant moderation effects emerged between discrimination and trust and between internalized heterosexism and commitment, indicating that trust was related to satisfaction for those who had experienced frequent discrimination, while commitment was related to satisfaction for those low in internalized heterosexism.     

Is Greece a Rent Seeking Society? A Research on the Relationship Between Entrepreneurship,Trust and Institutions

The paper analyses the various interactions among the institutional and cultural environment and the quality of entrepreneurial activity in Greece. The institutional context and the way in which institutions perform in particular, shape the structure of entrepreneurial incentives. As explicitly demonstrated by Baumol (J Political Econ 98:893–921, 1990) institutions actually channel entrepreneurial talent toward different activities which may be productive, unproductive or destructive. At the same time, informal institutions, i.e. culture and values have proven to be of equal importance for entrepreneurship. Within this context, the paper builds a simple model of rewards’ satisfaction accounting for first, the existence of income externalities, in order to test the hypothesis that individuals care about their relative position, i.e. economic status, and second, for the institutional quality, trust and values pertaining in the society, in order to analyze the possible existence of an underlying ‘social consensus’ that is supportive of rent-seeking behavior in Greece.     

Theoretical considerations on the C-D effect in self-thinning plant populations

A model for describing the competition–density (C-D) effect in self-thinning populations was developed on the basis of the following three basic assumptions: (1) the growth of mean phytomass follows a general logistic equation; (2) final yield is independent of initial population density; and (3) there exists a functional relationship between actual and initial population densities at any given time. The resultant equation takes the same reciprocal form as the reciprocal equation of the C-D effect derived from Shinozaki–Kira's theory (i.e., the logistic theory of the C-D effect), which deals with the density effect in nonself-thinning populations. However, one of the two time-dependent coefficients is quite different in mathematical interpretation between the two reciprocal equations. The reciprocal equation for self-thinning populations is essentially the same as the reciprocal equation assumed in the derivation of the functional relationship between actual and initial population densities. The establishment of the reciprocal equation is supported by the empirical facts that the reciprocal relationship between mean phytomass and population density is discernible in not only nonself-thinning populations but also in self-thinning populations. The present model is expected to systematically interpret underlying mechanisms between the C-D effect, which is observed at a time constant among populations with various initial densities, and self-thinning, which is observed along a time continuum in a given population. Received: August 5, 1998 / Accepted: January 7, 1999     

Social Diversity,Institutions and Trust: A Cross-National Analysis

This cross-national investigation examines hypotheses derived from two major alternative perspectives on the determinants of trust in contemporary societies. Is a society’s level of generalized trust a function of its ethnic composition, or of its type of governance and political system? The argument that social diversity (ethnic, linguistic, and religious) leads to lower levels of trust, at least in the short run, is assessed with cross-national data (N = 98). Two hypotheses derived from this perspective are not confirmed. The alternative rational governance argument, which holds that trust is a function of rational governance, stable democracy, and civil rights is also assessed. Three hypotheses derived from this political perspective reveal mixed results. The findings highlight the complex interplay of multiple factors in shaping a society’s overall level of generalized trust.     

Social Capital and Subjective Wellbeing in Europe: A New Approach on Social Capital

This paper aims to analyze the relationship between the various dimensions of social capital and subjective wellbeing. Data used in this study come from the fourth wave of the European Social Survey and different measures of wellbeing are used to take account of both the cognitive and affective processes of individual wellbeing (i.e. life satisfaction, happiness, and subjective wellbeing). A factor analysis is performed to summarize information coming from a large set of variables into different components corresponding to each dimension of social capital (i.e. networks, norms, and trust). Among the results, we find that the impact of social capital on subjective wellbeing differ depending on the component of social capital which is under analysis. In particular, social networks, social trust and institutional trust are the components that show a higher correlation with subjective wellbeing. Furthermore, in addition to the positive effects of the individual variables, our results suggest that social capital at the aggregate level positively correlates with individual wellbeing, thus pointing to an external or environmental effect of social capital.     

Country-Level Investment in Cultural Opportunity Structures. A Potential Source of Health Differences Between 21 European Countries

Individual’s participation in cultural activities may positively affect health through a pathway mediated by social capital. We examine whether country-level investment in cultural opportunity structures was associated with between-country differences in self-rated health and, if so, whether these associations were mediated by citizens’ confidence in societal institutions, i.e., by institutional trust, regarded as a dimension of social capital. For 24,887 respondents in the European Social Survey, 2006, data on self-rated health, institutional trust (individual-level and country-level), and sociodemographic variables were linked with statistics-based country-level data on 10 indicators of cultural opportunity structures and mediator variables (gross domestic product (GDP), Gini index, and welfare state regime). Over and above the sociodemographics, six cultural indicators contributed to between-country health differences in logistic multilevel regression analysis: the percentage of arts students, the RC index, the percentage of writers and creative artists of total employment, exports of cultural goods, imports of cultural goods, and the number of feature films produced per capita. Controlling, furthermore, for trust, and country-level mediators, only imports of cultural goods contributed to between-country differences in health. No associations with other cultural indicators remained after controlling for GDP or welfare state regime. Institutional trust may partially mediate the significance of cultural investments for self-rated health. However, both cultural investment and trust may be concomitants of general prosperity and welfare policies. Future studies should investigate whether the countries’ welfare policies influence the transformation of cultural investment into institutional trust and which types of indicators best depict associations between investments and health.