Effects of a Changing Religious Landscape on Community Social Bonds

Abstract

In many areas of the world, the role of traditional social spaces for forming and maintaining social capital is weakening. We analyze the effects of changes in a common social space, religious institutions, on community social bonds. To accomplish this, we use a unique dyadic network sample from western Kenya, an area undergoing extensive religious shifts due to the rise of Charismatic Christianity. Utilizing an identification strategy that makes use of the fact that people in these areas are more likely to attend closer religious institutions (RIs) due to transportation constraints, we find that severing an RI link with a peer increases the likelihood of severing an information link with that peer by 45 percentage points. We do not find a positive effect from forming an RI link, suggesting that information links take longer to build than to sever. We find no evidence that an individual trusts a peer less after severing an RI link, which is consistent with a setting in which information links are severed through the lack of casual interaction in a shared social space rather than bias caused by different religions or denominations. The study has important implications for understanding the role of social spaces in maintaining relationship bonds. It provides evidence that the fragmentation of these spaces decreases the number of casual interactions among individuals in a community, decreasing average levels of relationship strength and causing sparser information networks.