Markus Freitag & Paul C. Bauer University of Konstanz Department of Politics & Management

1. Markus Freitag & Paul C. Bauer University of Konstanz Department of Politics & Management Dimensions of trust University of Zürich, 16th ofJuly 2011

2. Outline • Research question and relevance • Dimensions of social trust • Data and operationalization • Methodological approach • Empirical results • Conclusions

3. Research question • Which distinct dimensions of social trust can we identify, both theoretically as well as empirically and to what extent are these dimensions equivalent cross-culturally?

4. Relevance of research question • Increasing popularity of “trust” was not paralleled by an increase in conceptual clarity • Trust is the “belief that others, through their action or inaction, will contribute to my/our well-being and refrain from inflicting damage upon me/us.” (Offe 1999: 47) • Disagreement among scholars with regard to the number of dimensions of social trust • Do respondents understand trust questions differently in different cultural contexts?

5. Dimensions of social trust • Trust as a one-dimensional construct • Trust in people we know and trust in people we do not know form a single dimension due to the fact that the latter arises as an externality from the former • Trust as a two-dimensional construct • Particularized trust • Trust toward personally known people • Generalized trust • Trust toward people beyond immediate familiarity (unknown people, strangers, random people one meets on the street)

6. Dimensions of social trust • Trust as a three-dimensional construct • Particularized trust • Generalized trust • Identity-based trust • Based on identification and categorization • Identities/categories may refer to behavioral similarities, ethnicity, or traditions (e.g. nationality, religion)

7. Data and operationalization • Data: Survey “Volunteering in Swiss Municipalities” (2010); 4955 respondents in Switzerland

8. Empirical analysis: Part I – CFA x 4 Model 1 Model 2a Model 3 Model 2b

9. Empirical analysis: Part II - MGCFA • Multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) • Test the 3-factor model in population subgroups • Subgroups: Individuals belonging to German-, French- and Italian-speaking regions • Levels of invariance • Configural invariance • Metric invariance • Scalar invariance

10. Empirical results: Dimensionality of social trust • Cut-off values indicating good model fit (Brown 2006): • RMSEA < 0.08; SRMR < 0.06; TLI > 0.95; CFI > 0.95 • Model 1, 2a and 2b display rather poor fit; Model 3 fares comparably better • Particularized, identity-based, and generalized trust emerge as three distinct constructs

11. Empirical results: MGCFA – Model 3 • Cut-off values indicating good model fit (Chen 2007): • Change of CFI lower than ≤.005 • Change of RMSEA lower than ≤ .010

12. Conclusions • Particularized, identity-based, and generalized trust emerge as three distinct constructs in our analysis and the theoretically assumed three-dimensionality of social trust is reflected by empirical data • It is possible to compare means of the latent constructs particularized, identity-based, and generalized trust between the three Suisse cultural regions investigated here • Since our analysis was conducted with the “special case” Switzerland we have reason to believe that the results yielded in our analysis might be true for other European countries as well

13. Thank you very much!