Community-based Social Capital Research Articles

Building Community-Based Social Capital by Enhancing Individual Social Capital: The Case of Farmers in Turkey’s Konya Region

Social capital refers to the formation of relationships, or working collectively, to achieve a common outcome. The objective of the current study is to determine whether community-based agricultural policy initiatives can succeed in the absence of consistently strong levels of individual farmer social capital behaviors. Targeting farmers from Turkey’s Konya region who also took part in a household survey, we present findings from a hypothetical field experiment of how farmers would allocate wheat endowment during a drought. We found that farmers allocated 48% of wheat endowment to social capital choices. Our results indicate that the more a farmer relies on himself or herself and resources available outside of the community, the less likely it is that the farmer will invest in community efforts.

Crime, community social capital and entrepreneurship: Evidence from Australian communities

Crime is an anti-social blight on communities that increases the cost of doing business, including for entrepreneurs. Drawing on Australian longitudinal data, this study examines the links between crime rates and the propensity for entrepreneurship within communities. We do so by matching propensity for entrepreneurship with types of crime found at the community level where crime occurs. We find that higher total crime rates, crimes against the person and property crime, significantly lower the propensity for entrepreneurship in communities. We also show that the core facets of community social capital – trust, membership in voluntary organizations and support and cooperation – mediate this relationship. Executive summaryWe comprehensively examine whether higher community crime rates – crime on people and crime on property – cause lower rates of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship research extensively examines how gaining social capital, defined as the social resources one gains within one's community, promotes entrepreneurship. This study considers whether a pervasive community dynamic in crime impedes entrepreneurship. Specifically, we show that the two main kinds of crime – people and property – inhibit entrepreneurship.We show the facets of community social capital that mediate the relationship between crime and entrepreneurship. We inform the role of community-based social capital in promoting entrepreneurship (Kwon et al., 2013) by considering how higher crime lowers social capital and in turn entrepreneurship. We show that core facets of relational social capital – trust, voluntary membership in community bodies, support, and cooperation – mediate the relationship between crime and entrepreneurship. Likewise, communities with more robust reserves of social capital are better able to withstand crime and promote entrepreneurship.Examining the link between crime and entrepreneurship allows us to contribute to the literature on entrepreneurship and social capital. We discuss the various ways in which crime diminishes social capital to shape entrepreneurship. In our framework that is predicated on theory on community social capital, crime creates distrust because it causes citizens to be wearier and more suspicious of each other, impeding sharing of ideas and knowledge for ventures. Crime impedes the efficacy and membership of community-based organizations that allow entrepreneurs to network. Crime reduces the support available for founders to start and sustain businesses in focal communities, as individuals seek opportunities and resources outside their communities. Crime diminishes the extent to which people take pride in and identify with their communities, as evidenced by voluntary membership in community organizations. Crime reduces collaboration because it leads to self-protective behaviors, including flight from high-crime communities, that hinder norms of reciprocity. Crime reduces cooperation as criminals are more likely to resort to coercion, as enforced by monitoring and violence, to solve business problems.Findings rely on a comprehensive database of crime rates across Australian postcodes. Crime is typically a localized phenomenon – it affects business outcomes in local communities. We obtain community-level crime rates from each Australian state and territory police force or relevant government agencies and match these data with entrepreneurship rates by postcode. Our primary identification strategy follows Dustmann and Fasani (2016), who estimate the effect of local area crime on mental health in the United Kingdom (UK). This identification strategy removes the effects of residential sorting and correlates crime with time-varying unobserved entrepreneurship determinants if there is no endogenous migration from local crime. The main findings are robust to instrumenting for local area crime to which movers are exposed and for historical abortion rates in the state or territory where the individual lives, as well as a number of other approaches to obtaining causal inference.The article holds considerable practical relevance for policymakers seeking to promote community entrepreneurship. Our study is highly relevant to community leaders and policymakers working to boost local entrepreneurship. Findings strongly suggest that efforts to reduce crime are a primary mechanism to protect social capital within communities and, therefore, entrepreneurship. Policy initiatives dedicated to creating and expanding social ventures would a) boost entrepreneurship and social capital and b) mitigate the detrimental effects of crime on entrepreneurship (Wry and York, 2017).

Individual Social Capital and Community Participation: An Empirical Analysis of Guangzhou, China

A social capital framework has been widely adopted to interpret participatory behaviors. While there is substantial literature regarding the effects of community-based social capital on grassroots participation, less attention has been paid to the relationship between different sources of social capital and community participation. This is particularly relevant for understanding community development undergone restructuring of individual social capital, such as China. To address this deficiency in the literature, this paper integrates both individual and social capital that is accessed within and outside a community to analyze their relation to different forms of community participation. Multilevel analysis is based on a large-scale community survey conducted in Guangzhou at the end of 2012. The results reveal a shift in social relations such that personal social resources are now mainly accessed outside the community. They further reveal that social resources outside communities are consistently and significantly related to all forms of participation. This implies that although residents’ personal networks have gradually diffused out of their communities, this has not only not reduced their enthusiasm toward the communities themselves but also facilitated participation in community affairs.

How does commute duration affect subjective well-being? A case study of Chinese cities

Previous research on the role of commute duration in subjective well-being (SWB) has paid little attention to developing countries and the possible pathways determining the relationship between them. In this study, we construct a conceptual framework, identifying the possible pathways through which commute duration may affect SWB. Next, we empirically analyse some of these pathways in the context of urban China. We find that although the direct effects of commute duration on life satisfaction and emotional well-being are insignificant, prolonged commute duration has significant and negative indirect effects on life satisfaction and emotional well-being through lowering health, job satisfaction, and community-based social capital. In addition, compared with people who commute by public transport, those who use private cars are more satisfied with their lives. Urban policymakers should give more consideration to reducing traffic congestion, to promoting the housing and labour market, as well as public transport, to reduce the negative influences of commute duration on SWB.

Sustainable Livelihoods Analysis as a Response to the Crisis in the Community and Voluntary Sector

The aim of this article is to recognize the crisis currently experienced by the voluntary and community sector (VCS) and to consider a creative response to this crisis utilizing VCS assets. The article uses a creative assets based response to the VCS crisis, utilizing sustainable livelihoods’ analysis (SLA) as a means of identifying VCS assets. SLA, traditionally used to explore vulnerabilities and assets at a household level, will be expanded and utilized to analyze the effects of austerity on small voluntary organizations. We use SLA as a theoretical lens through which to analyze our data, we propose that small VCS organizations can consider their position using SLA as a tool. The VCS can use SLA to consider its assets and vulnerabilities in the context of austerity; in engaging in this process, the VCS can recognize opportunities. The small VCS organization typically has high-quality community-based social capital, and it has a human capital and community knowledge. This integrated grassroots social capital expertise and strong community-based human capital is unique to the VCS. In mobilizing its assets, the VCS as a sector can seek to overcome the funding crisis that it is experiencing and develop creative solutions to austerity.

I Want Him Locked Up

An impressive array of literature acknowledges the role of family members, friends, neighbors, and community institutions as rich resources of social capital which poor African American parents utilize in the collective socialization of their children. How parents access, mobilize, and deploy family and community-based social capital in resource-deprived communities for the social benefit of their children has been well documented. Yet, little is known about the challenges poor parents face raising troubled youth, particularly African American boys, when they are unable to generate social capital within their social network of family members, friends, neighbors, and community institutions to assist with raising their children. How do low-income African American parents raise troubled youth in disadvantaged communities when there are few resources of social support to draw upon? What strategies do parents use when they have exhausted and depleted their social capital? Drawing on three years of ethnographic field observations and multiple in-depth interviews with parents of pre-delinquent African American boys, this article examines how African American parents living in an impoverished African American community in New York City rely on the juvenile justice system, particularly juvenile confinement, as a parenting strategy. The findings suggest the need for alternatives to juvenile confinement and additional social support resources that can assist parents with parenting troubled youth.

The Public School as a Public Good: Direct and Indirect Pathways to Community Satisfaction

ABSTRACT:Individuals’ satisfaction with their community can play an important role in urban politics, and the quality of public schools is a key predictor of community satisfaction. However, most discussions of public schools focus only on their educational and social benefits for children, although others expand the scope to consider benefits to their parents as well. In this paper, we take a broader view, arguing that local public schools are providers of public goods that potentially benefit all members of a community, including those without school-aged children. Using data from the Soul of the Community survey, we examine the relationship between public school quality and community satisfaction in 26 U.S. communities, and find no differences between individuals with and without school-aged children at home. Furthermore, for those without children, we find that the effect of schools on community satisfaction is partially mediated by community-based social capital, suggesting that public schools provide both direct and indirect pathways to community satisfaction. We conclude with a discussion of these findings, focusing on their implications for the maintenance and structure of public schools in American cities.

Ethnic community involvement, entrepreneurial social capital, and business performance

Ethnic or immigrant social networks tend to influence the type of business that an ethnic entrepreneur starts, as well as the success or failure of the business. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model that proposes that ethnic community involvement influences the configuration of ethnic community-based entrepreneurial social capital which, in turn, influences ethnic business performance. In addition, the relationship between ethnic community-based social capital and business performance is proposed to be moderated by two micro-level constructs – entrepreneur characteristics (education level, business experience, and language fluency) and business characteristics (age and ownership) – as well as by two macro-level constructs, ethnic community characteristics (community social capital and community resources) and societal forces (economic, political, legal/regulatory, and industry). This model can help promote a better understanding of ethnic enterprises and make a contribution to the development of improved approaches for the promotion and growth of such businesses.

Ethnic Communities and School Performance among the New Second Generation in the United States: Testing the Theory of Segmented Assimilation

This article examines the theory of segmented assimilation, which traces the divergent adaptation of immigrant children in the post-1969 wave to the nature of reception by U.S. society, access to social capital through ethnic communities, and exposure to oppositional cultures of marginalized domestic minorities. The article provides a test of those arguments in the area of school performance. Based on data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study, indicators of community-based social capital are shown to account for considerable interethnic differences in school performance. The results challenge notions that ethnic communities are generally supportive of the second generation's school performance, while contact with oppositional cultures of domestic minorities is the main cause of lower than average achievement. They support a conditional view of ethnic communities: the extent to which immigrant families' insertion into ethnic communities can support the school performance of their children depends on the communities' socioeconomic profile and level of aspirations.

The Contextual Effects of Community Social Capital on Academic Performance

Although previous research has underscored the importance of family social capital in serving educational purposes, few studies have examined the relationship between social capital accumulated in a local community and the academic performance of all students living in the community. The current study has applied an explicit multilevel model to study this relationship. Hierarchical linear model analyses of a nationally representative sample of 8th-grade students have demonstrated that most measures of community social capital are consistently associated with performance, even after controlling for measures of family social capital and demographic factors. Further, the socioeconomic characteristics of a community and the process component of community social capital explain a large portion of the associations between community structure and academic performance. In addition, the contextual effects of a high concentration of nontraditional and large families vary according to the level of process social capital. Finally, most of the contextual effects examined are approximately linear. In summary, this study has underscored the importance of community-based social capital in studying academic performance.

Social Capital and Successful Development among At-Risk Youth

Social scientists have been slow to appreciate the great diversity among the poor. Until quite recently, researchers have devoted more attention to examining patterns of persistent poverty than to understanding how individuals and families maneuver their way out of economic disadvantage (for exceptions, see Clark, 1983; Kellam, Ensminger, & Turner, 1977; Williams Kornblum, 1985). Evidence about mobility patterns among the poor provides a perfect analogy to the half-empty/half-full glass. Of individuals who begin life in poverty, at least as many manage to improve their circumstances as remain persistently impoverished (Duncan, Hill, & Hoffman, 1988). Yet relatively little is known about how and why some of the disadvantaged eventually escape while others remain entrapped in poverty. As researchers from different disciplines have begun to tackle this problem, they have, not surprisingly, each featured explanations congenial to their distinctive ways of looking at the world. Economists stress the importance of financial and human capital, highlighting how individuals invest time and money to improve their long-term position in the labor force (Palmer, Smeeding, & Torrey, 1988). Psychologists point out the importance of individual traits such as competence and self-efficacy, both of which are linked to upward mobility (Bandura, 1989; Garmezy, 1985; Rutter & Madge, 1976; Werner & Smith, 1982). Sociologists, for their part, underscore the importance of institutional resources and social networks in the communities where poor people reside (Granovetter, 1973; Wellman 8t Wortley, 1990). Of course, in reality these different sorts of mechanisms often operate in tandem. Perhaps the most interesting question, then, is how these various sources of differentiation among the poor are packaged together. Answering the question of how id why certain types of individuals locate and use resources that are often in short supply within their local environments to improve their own prospects, or the long-term prospects of their children, involves integrating the different disciplinary perspectives. This article draws on data from a longitudinal study of teenage mothers and their children to investigate sources of differentiation on several indicators of young adult success. In particular, we explore the role of social capital, a concept developed by Coleman (1988) that to some extent bridges the disciplinary gaps described above. Our goal is to determine whether successful outcomes among our sample of disadvantaged youth are related to measures of both family-based and community-based social capital. SOCIAL CAPITAL AND YOUTH DEVELOPMENT The process of investment in the economic, psychological, and social resources believed to be associated with upward mobility begins early in life and typically takes place within the family. Parents, in addition to utilizing their financial resources, cultivate and promote individual competencies in their children; with varying degrees of effectiveness, these same parents seek opportunities in the environment and attempt to shelter their children from dangers. Thus, the family represents a point of common interest to social scientists seeking to understand why and how certain children are able to escape the powerful disadvantage of growing up poor. Coleman (1988) employed the term social capital to designate the complex and variegated social mechanisms that parents garner to advance their children's chances of success. Coleman's description of social capital is quite broad and overlaps with some of the specific theoretical constructs and processes identified by developmental psychologists attempting to explain the successful adaptation of children at risk of long-term disadvantage (see, e.g., Garmezy & Rutter, 1983). Coleman's ideas also echo the approach to studying development formulated by Bronfenbrenner and his students (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Garbarino, 1992; Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992). …