Border Region Attachment: An Empirical Study on Regional Social Capital in the French–German Border Area

Social Capital, Collective Action, and Adaptation to Climate Change

Marcus Wiens, Miriam Klein and Frank Schultmann

CESifo Economic Studies, 2022, vol. 68, issue 4, 362-390

Abstract: In today’s globalized and interconnected world, international relationships are becoming ever more important. This applies not only to political relations but also to transnational attachment, a positive and solidary mutual attitude between the citizens of two countries, which is mainly based on social capital and trust. In particular border areas can benefit enormously when people have a bond with their neighboring country and its inhabitants. Due to their geographic proximity and historically shaped identity, border regions have a high potential for increased economic and social exchange. While empirical work on these characteristics of specific border areas is scarce, this article presents a novel approach which applies the concept of transnational social capital taking the French–German border area as an example. The representative study is based on telephone interviews, which were conducted in the border area and in regions within the two countries as a control for country-level effects. We find strong evidence for border region attachment in form of higher levels of social capital and trust in the border area. Our findings have important implications for borderland economies in general and in particular for cross-border resilience with regard to prevailing risks like upcoming nationalism and disasters such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

Keywords: borderland; trust; social capital; empirical research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D70 E03 F15 R10 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cesifo/ifac010 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:cesifo:v:68:y:2022:i:4:p:362-390.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

CESifo Economic Studies is currently edited by Panu Poutvaara

More articles in CESifo Economic Studies from CESifo Group Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().