1 / 23

Social Participation and Trust Disentangling Causes and Effects

Virtuous circles in social capital. Civic engagement and trust are mutually reinforcing"The causal arrows among civic involvement, [..] and social trust are as tangled as well-tossed spaghetti"Robert D. Putnam (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simo

gyan
Download Presentation

Social Participation and Trust Disentangling Causes and Effects

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

    1. Social Participation and Trust Disentangling Causes and Effects ESRA Conference Warsaw, July 1, 2009 René Bekkers ICS/Department of Sociology, Utrecht University, and Department of Philanthropic Studies, VU University Amsterdam

    2. Virtuous circles in social capital “Civic engagement and trust are mutually reinforcing” “The causal arrows among civic involvement, [..] and social trust are as tangled as well-tossed spaghetti” Robert D. Putnam (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, page 137

    3. Theories on causation Group socialization theory People adopt the values of the groups that they are in (family, church, work) ‘Social capital’ (attitude) formation Self-perception theory People adapt their values and self-identity to their behavior Role identity theory: volunteer role identity is reinforced through volunteering

    4. The evidence is thin Brehm & Rahn (1997): reciprocal influences between trust and membership Uslaner (2002): results obtained through 2SLS not robust over different specifications Delhey & Newton (2003): trust and membership are only weakly correlated in most countries Claibourn & Martin (2000): no effect of changes in memberships on changes in trust Smith (1966) and Stolle (2003): we need panel data

    5. A theory on selection for trust ‘Interactionism’ in personality and social psychology Individual differences in trust shape perceptions of contributions to collective goods Failures to contribute by others are ‘noise’ to trustors; ‘evidence’ for misanthropists Justification-effects reinforce prior differences in trust

    6. As a result… Trustors are more likely to start volunteering, and less likely to quit Misanthropists are less likely to start volunteering, and more likely to quit Trustors may become more trusting and misanthropists may become less trusting as a result of changes in volunteering

    7. It’s all about selection! BTW, note also: Individuals with larger networks are more likely to be asked to start and continue volunteering Individuals in better (mental) health are more able to continue volunteering More happy/satisfied individuals are more likely to help others (and be helped in return)

    8. Causation theories Group socialization theory People adopt the values of the groups that they are in (family, church, work) ‘Social capital’ (attitude) formation Self-perception theory People adapt their values and self-identity to their behavior Role identity theory: volunteer role identity is reinforced through volunteering

    9. Hypotheses tested in this paper Stability hypothesis: no effects at all Contextual diversity hypothesis: trust grows only interactions in diverse groups Group socialization hypothesis: trust grows only interactions in trusting groups Intensity of engagement hypothesis: trust grows only if a lot of time is invested

    10. Main Data and Measures Giving in the Netherlands Panel Survey, 2002-2006 (nt1=1,946; nt1..2=1,246; nt1..3 =692; nt1..4 =562) Structural equation model of trust Changes in trust after joining, quitting, or sustaining volunteer work 2002-2008 Trust: average score (1-5) for “Most people can be trusted” + “You can’t be too careful in dealing with other people” (r = .46) Volunteering: extensive method-area module

    11. Adequate Testing, Please! Cross-sectional data are useless here We need longitudinal data to disentangle causes and consequences of voluntary participation We should look at how people change over time when they have started and quit volunteering Halaby (2004, Annual Review of Sociology): controlling for Yt-1 is not enough Use fixed effects regression models, eliminating variance between individuals XT in STATA

    12. Development of generalized social trust (‘most people can be trusted’)

    13. Stability of Trust

    14. Changes in trust

    15. Volunteering effects on values

    16. Reinforcement effects

    17. Effects of trust on volunteering

    18. The British Household Panel Study A sample of about 10,000 UK citizens is (re)interviewed every year since 1991 Data used from wave 6 (1996) to 15 (2005) 6,040 respondents completed wave 14 out of 9,032 wave 6 respondents (66.9%) Trust declined from 37.1% in 1998 to 31.1% in 2005

    19. Participation effects on trust

    20. Evidence from Switzerland

    21. Effects on life satisfaction

    22. Selection, Mostly… Relationship of volunteering with trust is primarily due to selection, not causation More trusting individuals are more likely to be asked to start volunteering, are more likely to do so, and are less likely to quit Joining or quitting the volunteer work force hardly change people’s trust Trust is very stable over a period of 4 years (.78)

    23. Thank you, says

More Related