An Empirical Note on Religiosity and Social Trust using German Survey Data

Anja Koebrich Leon () and Christian Pfeifer ()
Additional contact information
Anja Koebrich Leon: Leuphana University Lueneburg

Economics Bulletin, 2013, vol. 33, issue 1, 753-763

Abstract: In this empirical research note, we use a large scale German household survey data set to analyze the correlation between religiosity and social trust. Religiosity takes into account religious affiliations (Catholic, Protestant, other Christian, Muslim/Islam, other religions, none) and the frequency of church attendance. In order to measure social trust, we use three outcome variables (willingness to take risks in trusting strangers, frequency of lending personnel belongings or money to friends). Our main findings in multivariate linear and ordered Probit regressions are: (1) Muslims tend to be less trusting towards strangers and they less often lend personnel belongings but not money to friends than other religious groups and non affiliated persons. (2) Catholics and Protestants do not differ significantly from each other and tend to be more trusting towards strangers but not towards friends than other religious groups and non affiliated persons. (3) Church attendance seems to play only a minor role in the context our social trust measures.

Keywords: church; religion; risk taking preference; social trust; trust behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D1 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-03-15
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2013/Volume33/EB-13-V33-I1-P73.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-12-00927

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from AccessEcon
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John P. Conley ().