European Values Survey Research Articles

National inequality, social capital, and public goods decision-making

Inequality affects how people make social decisions. Laboratory research has shown that when income inequality is simulated using cooperative economic games, groups with higher inequality often generate less wealth overall, with poorer group members receiving the worst outcomes. This study links these experimental findings to real world inequality and applies a decision model to explain the effects in terms of social decision-making dynamics. Using a pre-existing dataset from 255 groups playing a public goods game in thirteen economically diverse societies, we show that in nations with higher inequality, groups contribute less (Research question (RQ) 1). Further, we find that higher inequality is associated with lower optimism regarding others’ contributions at the outset of the game and increased sensitivity to others’ contributions, which accelerates the decay of cooperation (RQ2). These effects might be explained by national differences in social capital as expressed by trust and adherence to civic norms (RQ3). Using the European Values Survey, we replicate the negative association between inequality and contributions to a public good by examining national volunteering rates (RQ4).

The Greening of the Global South? Analyzing World Values Survey and European Values Survey Data on Environmental Movements in 88 countries and territories from 2017-2021

The Greening of the Global South? Analyzing World Values Survey and European Values Survey Data on Environmental Movements in 88 countries and territories from 2017-2021

Examining Traits of Engagement in Solidarity Actions in Romania: An Analysis of Findings from Social Values Studies with a Comparative Emphasis

Abstract Social solidarity is increasingly under scrutiny in the contemporary world. Modern phenomena such as individualization, globalization, and migration have sparked inquiries into the dynamics and transformations of solidarity. Within this context, our study seeks to address one dimension of solidarity: the actions that embody it. We embark on a two-fold mission. On the one hand, we delve into the characteristics of the people engaging in solidarity actions. On the other hand, we compare results regarding acts of solidarity in Romania across different time frames. Our analysis mainly draws from the data collected through the European Values Survey in 2018. Comparisons are made with results from previous analyses and data from the 2012 World Values Survey. To accomplish these ends, we rely on both descriptive and multivariate analyses. Results suggest that approximately two-thirds of Romanians engage in solidarity actions. The likelihood of involving in solidarity actions is mainly influenced by age, religious behaviour, individualization, membership in associations, and recent volunteering behaviour.

An Experimental Investigation of Trusting Behaviour

In this paper, we present the results of an experiment conducted in Italy on trusting behaviour. Our subjects participated in a trust game and filled in a questionnaire on trust and trustworthiness based on the attitudinal questions reported in the European Value Survey. The aims of the research are twofold. Firstly, using the experimental dataset, we construct two measures of trustworthiness among all recipients in the experiment, one based on the questionnaires’ answers and another based on the strategy method. We then compare the ex-ante behavioural decision to trust (before participants are allocated to a group) with the ex-post decision to trust (after participants are allocated to a group and trustors are informed of the level of trustworthiness of all the recipients who have been randomly allocated to each group). Our main finding is that trust strongly varies once the information is disclosed to trustors. The effect on trust is greater when the strategy method is used. Secondly, we compare the behavioural measure of trust with the attitudinal measures of trust and trustworthiness and find that there is only a weak correlation between the two measures, thus confirming, for the Italian case, similar findings in country-based studies on trust.

Parenting styles and school performance: evidence from second-generation immigrants in Norway

ABSTRACT We study the effects of parenting style on students’ school performance, assuming that immigrant parents’ child-rearing strategies derive from their country of origin. Following Doepke and Zilibotti [2017. Parenting with style: Altruism and paternalism in intergenerational preference transmission. Econometrica, 85(5), 1331–1371. https://do.org/10.3982/ECTA14634], we measure patterns of parenting using data from the World Value and European Value Surveys. We combine these data with Norwegian register data on students’ test scores and exam results. Non-authoritarian parenting styles that encourage hard work (authoritativeness) or allow students to develop their independence and imagination (permissiveness) yield the better educational outcomes.

Pursuit of happiness: Subjective well‐being of immigrants and natives

AbstractRecent studies establish that subjective well‐being plays a significant part in the adjustment of immigrants in the host country and that after facing the initial costs of migration, immigrants experience levels of well‐being similar to natives across generations. Using two surveys, including the World Values Survey as well as the joint World Values Survey and European Value Survey, we, however, find that variations in subjective well‐being of immigrants and natives persist across generations, with second‐generation immigrants experiencing higher differences. This finding can be attributed to an increase in the aspirations of second‐generation immigrants. In developed regions, both first‐generation and second‐generation immigrants have a higher probability of reporting greater subjective well‐being than natives, which can be attributed to an improved standard of living among immigrants. Additionally, we look at the association between holding immigration‐friendly attitudes and the subjective well‐being of natives. Our study provides important policy insights.

Understanding the Association between Alcohol Stigma and Alcohol Consumption within Europe: A Cross-Sectional Exploratory Study

Introduction: Stigma towards alcohol-related conditions is more pronounced than stigma against any other mental illness and has remained high throughout past decades. Although alcohol consumption is a known and persistent contributor to the burden of disease and interpersonal threat and may thus shape public attitudes towards consumption, no study to date has provided an overview of the prevalence of alcohol stigma and its association with (a) alcohol consumption and (b) harm attributable to alcohol across Europe. As a social reaction to thresholds of accepted use of alcohol, stigma could impact consumption, resulting in a reduced quantity or at least less harmful drinking patterns. This contribution provides an initial overview by addressing the following research questions. (i) What are the country-level prevalence rates of alcohol stigma compared across European countries? (ii) Is alcohol stigma associated with (a) alcohol consumption and (b) alcohol-attributable harm? (iii) Is there an association between alcohol stigma and alcohol consumption by type of beverage? Methods: We combined data on country-level desire for social distance towards “heavy drinkers” (European Values Survey, operationalization of “alcohol stigma”) with indicators of alcohol consumption, including adult per capita consumption (APC), heavy episodic drinking, consumption by type of beverage (wine, beer, spirits), and harm attributable to alcohol, namely age-standardized disability-adjusted life years lost to alcohol consumption (AADALYs) for 28 countries. Linear regression models were applied. Results: (i) Social distance varied noticeably across countries (M = 62.9%, SD = 16.3%) in a range of 28.3% and 87.3%. (ii) APC was significantly positive related to social distance (β = 0.55, p = 0.004). (iii) Wine consumption was significantly negative related to social distance; the opposite was true for spirits consumption. No association was found for beer consumption. The best model fit was achieved with APC (β = 0.48, p = 0.002) and wine per capita consumption (β = −0.55, p < 0.001) explaining 57.0% (adjusted R²) of the variance in social distance. Conclusion: Our study shows a strong relationship between country-level alcohol stigma and alcohol consumption. If stigma was to deter people from harmful alcohol consumption, it would be expected that higher levels of alcohol stigma are associated with lower levels of overall alcohol consumption or consumption of spirits in particular. Instead, stigma seems to be a reaction to harmful drinking patterns without changing these patterns for the better.

Does collective bargaining reduce health inequalities between labour market insiders and outsiders?

AbstractCollective bargaining institutions are correlated with better population health. However, there are still major gaps in our understanding regarding the impact of collective bargaining on health inequalities, particularly between labour market ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’. In this study, we investigate the effect of collective bargaining coverage on individuals’ self-rated health, and whether the impact varies according to labour market status. We use four waves of the European Values Survey (1981–2018) and three-level nested random intercept models across 33 OECD and European countries (N = 66 301). We find that stronger and more inclusive collective bargaining institutions reduce health inequalities between the unemployed and the employed by disproportionately improving the health of the unemployed. This study implies that targeting the political institutions that shape the distribution of power and resources is important for reducing health inequalities.

Changing attitudes about the impact of women's employment on families: The COVID-19 pandemic effect.

We use representative longitudinal panel data from the Dutch European Values Survey (EVS) to study whether the COVID‐19 pandemic shifted opinions about how a woman's full‐time employment impacts family life. The data was collected before the COVID‐19 pandemic in 2017 and in May 2020. The analysis focuses on groups whose unpaid and paid work situation changed abruptly with the COVID‐19 pandemic: parents with coresident children, and those who experienced a change in paid workload that clashes with traditional gender role expectations, namely women whose workload increased and men whose workload decreased or who stopped working. We found that groups that faced an abrupt change in their paid and unpaid work routines that clashed with their previously held gender attitude changed their gender attitude in alignment with the new paid or unpaid work situation. For women in couple households with children, this meant that they saw a halt in their progression toward gender egalitarian attitudes. For those who experienced a change in paid workload that clashes with traditional gender role norms, it meant stronger progression toward gender egalitarian attitudes. The results are interpreted on the basis of cognitive dissonance theory and exposure theory and placed in the context of previous findings.

Does international trade favor proximity in cultural beliefs?

Cultural proximity has been considered as a crucial determinant of bilateral trade flows. Scant emphasis has, instead, been devoted to the investigation of the opposite direction of causality. International trade eases contacts and increases trust among contracting parties and may, then, promote the spread of cultural beliefs across borders. By using World and European Values Surveys data, we provide evidence on the role of trade flows in favoring countries’ cultural convergence for a large sample of countries over the period 1989–2014. Results confirm that international trade narrows differences in cultural beliefs and attitudes, but just when trade partners share some culture-related traits. Common ancestry, religion and legal system as well as high historical bilateral migration flows are necessary conditions for trade reducing cultural distance. Also, the convergence effect turns to be completely driven by trade flows of differentiated goods which entail relationship-specific investments and a deeper commitment between contracting parties.

National Values of Ukraine: Essence, Diversity, Consolidation Potential

The study is devoted to understanding the essence, set, typology and dynamics of national values of Ukraine in their heuristic meaning for the development of a modern democratic state. Particular attention is paid to the consolidating, unifying, and solidarity functions of national values, while recourse to the historical experience allows us to seek heuristic models of their productive use in modern Ukraine. The Constitution of Ukraine solemnly proclaims that a person, their life and health, honor and dignity, inviolability and security are recognized in Ukraine as the highest social value. Thus, man is the highest national value, for which the whole system of regulatory relations is built both within the state and in its relations with external partners. Man as a national value appears mainly in three hierarchical dimensions: individuals, communities, and the nation as the aggregate content of all citizens of the state. Accordingly, there is a semantic and voluminous load of national values at all three levels, from personal-existential, interpersonal, and inter-group to synergetic requirements of security, development and prosperity. The essential structure of the value being depends on the content of its basic components: axiologemes, predictors, attitudes, domains and the world in general. Ukrainian society has been the object of such influence for many centuries, which resulted in its value domain to have been significantly violated, requiring purposeful efforts of the independent state to revive and harmonize it. Current value trends have been monitored since 1981 in the framework of the European Values Survey and the World Values Survey. Global positive changes in the social development of the world community were identified, in particular the correlation between the values of self-expression and the activity of democratic institutions of civil society. The proposed research model is based on the comparison of indicators of different countries on such principles: traditional values – secular-rational values; values of survival – values of self-expression. From the second half of the 1990s, Ukraine has been included in both projects, which allows identifying positive and negative trends in social transformations to compare them with global trends.

The political foundations of party organizational variance

The aim of this contribution is twofold: first, to verify empirically how and to what extent party organizations vary within countries, in time; second, to enhance the role of political factors in explaining organizational variance. While mainstream literature has generally overestimated cross-national party convergence, a renewed interest in the study of variance has recently gained ground. We thus focus on seven European countries, from 1990 to 2010, by combining party organizational data from the Party Organization Data Handbook and the Political Party Database Project, with domestic cultural, socioeconomic, technological data from the European Values Survey and the World Bank, as well as supranational economic data provided by the OECD. We are interested in verifying how much of the variance in party organizations can be explained by resorting to the parameters of the party systems vis-à-vis domestic and supranational extra-political factors. Our results show that the explanatory power of party systems’ parameters is stronger than the predictive ability of contextual variables.

The relationship between level of education and household income in the justification of political violence in the EU. the moderating effect of poverty at the country level

ABSTRACT Several studies show that political violence justification (PVJ) is associated with unfavourable social and economic characteristics such as poor education, low income, and poverty at the national level. However, the mechanisms by which these factors interact remain unclear. This study aims to find out whether poverty at the country level (contextual poverty) moderates the relationship between individuals’ educational level and household income, and PVJ in the European Union (EU). We perform an analysis using a dataset of 15.347 individuals from twelve EU countries who participated in the European Values Survey, 2017. Logistic regressions models with interaction terms were used to analyze factors related to PVJ. Our findings are twofold. First, we find no evidence of educational level and PVJ's relationship in countries with medium levels of contextual poverty. In contrast, in countries with low levels of contextual poverty, individuals with medium educational level were associated with higher PVJ. Second, individuals living in countries with lower levels of contextual poverty and higher household income were associated with higher PVJ. We conclude that more individuals tend to justify political violence in countries with lower contextual poverty levels—individuals with medium educational level and higher household income. To our knowledge, this is the first study to find evidence that education and socioeconomic status may amplify PVJ in the EU.

The Hypocritical Consciousness and the Emancipatory Aims of the Soviet Society

The material and the post-material values of the young generation in the last Soviet decade are analysed according to the theory of human development and compared with the values of the rest of the society. They are further analysed in light of hypocritical dispositions that developed systematically during the Soviet period. The study uses the data of the European Value Survey of 1990. The youngest cohort more preferred post-material values and declared emancipatory aims, but also was more in favour of breaking social norms than the older generation.

Anti-Corruption Protests and University Students: Evidence from Russian Cities

AbstractThere are conflicting theoretical expectations regarding students' protest behaviour in contemporary autocracies. On the one hand, in line with a resource model of political participation, university students are more likely to protest than their peers without higher education. On the other hand, university students in autocracies might refrain from high-risk activism in exchange for their own financial well-being and career advancement. To address this debate, the article leverages data on anti-corruption protests organized by the opposition politician Alexei Navalny in March 2017. Results show that anti-corruption protests were larger in Russian cities with a larger university student population. Next, employing individual-level data from the fifth wave of the European Values Survey, multinomial logistic regression analysis demonstrates that university students participated in demonstrations at a higher rate than non-students of the same age. More broadly, these findings yield insights into subnational variation in mass mobilization in a repressive political regime.

Аксіологічний простір ровесників незалежності України: соціологічні виміри

The paper offers an attempt of theoretical conceptualisation of coevals’ values of independence of Ukraine, as well as carries out the approbation of the put forward theoretical positions in empirical studies with the participation of authors. Coevals of independence are the oldest age cohort of the generation born in free Ukraine, and the central line-forming concept is the concept of “generational values”. The authors emphasised that in the multiparadigmality of modern sociology, it is methodologically expedient to develop several variants of “generational values” concepts following the main lines of sociological theorising, each of which provides appropriate empirical research methods. Paper considers four possible research schemes of these concepts in the framework of the “first”, “second”, “third” sociology (based on the works of G. Zborovsky and P. Sztompka), and a scheme based on the work of K. Mannheim is singled out. Semantic modelling of the “generational values” concept of using the axiological core of the “first” sociology (or neoclassical, objectivist) metaparadigm of sociological theorising with the appropriate method of quantitative empirical research. This allowed testing the theoretical provisions of this concept in the development of methods and empirical research with the authors’ participation and a comparative analysis of sociological information with databases of the World and European Values Surveys 2020 (particularly in Ukraine). The common and distinctive features of axiological spaces of respondents aged 29–30 in the global, European, and local context are determined, the specifics of the axiological system of the older age cohort (coevals) of the generation born in 1991–1992 are revealed to emphasise the peculiarities of the value spaces of Ukraine’s independence coevals, first of all, in relation to the ratio of materialist and postmaterialist values. The general conclusion is the recorded ambivalence of the axiological space of thirty-year-old respondents with barely noticeable shifts towards the older generations in the context of the prevailing trend of transition to post-materialist values.

Liberal sexual morality, religion, and attitudes toward abortion in Turkey

AbstractThe present study examines the association between sexual morality, religion, and attitudes toward the practice of abortion in Turkey. Drawing upon data from the 2008–2010 European Value Survey in the case of Turkey, several hypotheses were tested concerning the role of liberal sexual relations and many aspects of religion on abortion attitudes. Findings reveal that support of liberal sexual relations demonstrates the strongest justification for abortion. As a religious determinant, prayer practice indicates the most robust opposition to the practice of abortion. Additional religious factors, personal religious identity, and personal faith were also found to be significantly associated with antiabortion attitudes. The findings are discussed and have implications for future research on attitudes toward abortion.

The Role of Actual Democracy in the Link between National Identity and Support for Democracy

Abstract This article analyzes the interplay between national identity and democracy. Multilevel models were tested using European Value Survey (EVS 2017), which includes 30 countries in total. On the individual level, emphasis on non-voluntary features of national identity, where national membership depends on the accident of origin, relates to lower support for democracy. At the country level, the level of actual democracy was taken in to account (Varieties of Democracy 2017). In general, higher levels of actual democracy correlate with stronger support for the ideal democracy, yet, a high level of actual democracy amplifies the negative relationship between non-voluntary national identity and support for democracy.

Individual value orientation, social norms, and volunteering outcomes in later life

A growing body of scholarship examines the social and personal benefits of volunteering across the life course. However, less is known about how this experience of volunteering varies across different national contexts and how the impact of volunteering is shaped by micro- and macro-conditions. This article utilizes a cross-national multilevel regression analysis of European Values Survey data to explore the benefits of volunteering for two distinct sets of aging populations in the EU: those identified as “materialists” and “postmaterialists.” It finds that a positive association between volunteering and one key indicator of quality of life (“control over life”) generally exists for postmaterialists, while it is more positive in countries with stronger familial norms among materialists. Hence, the role of volunteering in later life is not as uniform as suggested by the active aging approach.

Correction to: Relationships Among Belief in God, Well-Being, and Social Capital in the 2020 European and World Values Surveys: Distinguishing Interpersonal and Ideological Prosociality

Correction to: Relationships Among Belief in God, Well-Being, and Social Capital in the 2020 European and World Values Surveys: Distinguishing Interpersonal and Ideological Prosociality