Human Development and Generalized Trust: Multilevel Evidence

Abstract

Generalized trust is one of the most debated topics in social sciences. A flood of papers attempting to examine its foundations has been published over the last few decades. However, only a handful of studies incorporates a multilevel approach and investigates how macro conditions shape the individual determinants of generalized trust. This investigation seeks to fill this gap, using the broad sample of the fifth round of the World Values Survey, multilevel regression modeling, human development as country-level moderator and trust in unknown people as a more perfect measure of generalized trust. We took six theories of trust origin suggested by Delhey and Newton (2003) as a starting point, and demonstrate that along with common factors (such as particularized trust and confidence in institutions), generalized trust can be influenced by a set of specific determinants which differ depending on the level of human development. In poorly developed societies, financial satisfaction was the only indicator that fostered generalized trust, while education decreased it. In highly developed countries it was active membership, open-access activities, emancipative values, age and education which contributed to the strengthening of trust