Which Type of Social Capital Matters for Building Trust in Government? Looking for a New Type of Social Capital in the Governance Era

Seunghwan Myeong and Hyungjun Seo
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Seunghwan Myeong: Department of Public Administration, Inha University, Nam-gu, Incheon 402-751, Korea
Hyungjun Seo: Department of Global e-Governance, Inha University, Nam-gu, Incheon 402-751, Korea

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: When the level of trust in government is low, government cannot effectively provide services, since the policy goals and the process of implementations are not fully understood by the people. This study hypothesizes that the level of trust in government may increase if the level of social capital increases. It also hypothesizes that the impact of social capital on the level of trust in government may differ depending on the type of social capital. The study examined the relationship between the level of trust in government and types of social capital, including bonding social capital and bridging social capital. The result of multiple regression analysis showed that bonding social capital shows a negative relationship with the level of trust in government, while a bridging social capital has a positive relationship with the level of trust in government. In addition, the study examined the variances of the perceptions of each group based on the degree of social cohesion on the level of trust in government by employing ANOVA. It showed that there are no significant differences in bonding social groups, while bridging social capital groups showed variances in their perception of the level of trust in government.

Keywords: trust in government; bonding social capital; bridging social capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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