ABSTRACT This research, which covers 100 countries representing 88.5% of the world's population, reveals a nuanced relationship between trust and democracy, employing various methods such as instrumental variables, panel data fixed effects analysis, and alternative measures of democracy. Personal trust and general social trust are associated with increased democracy, a more liberal political culture, and better governance. In contrast, institutional trust is associated with reduced democracy, lower political engagement, decreased government effectiveness, and diminished concern for civil liberties. This effect is correlated with poverty, women's economic participation, and religious diversity. Underprivileged groups, like poor and women with limited economic roles, mitigate the negative association of institutional trust on democracy. Additionally, religious diversity increases the negative association of institutional trust and democracy. Despite democratic costs, constituents likely maintain higher institutional trust driven by rational interests, prompting the need for vigilant governance and checks on power. The implications challenge traditional policy prescriptions that assume governments inherently act to promote democracy, highlighting that high institutional trust can enable governments to pursue self‐interested agendas that may erode democratic norms. The findings emphasize the need for reforms focused on strengthening independent oversight bodies, empowering civil society, protecting press freedom, and fostering external constraints on executive power. Ultimately, durable democratic governance depends not on governmental goodwill but on vigilant institutions and active public participation that reshape political incentives toward transparency and accountability.

Agency (i.e., the ability to act intentionally within the constraints of a given social context) is an important aspect of constructing a narrative identity. For young people in secure care, their freedom is highly restricted, which may hinder their abilities to act and feel agentic. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine how agency was expressed in stories written by young people in secure care in Sweden. A thematic narrative analysis of 53 narratives resulted in three main themes— change in perspective , engagement with the outer world and resistance —indicating that agency can be expressed despite a constrained environment and may include both adaptive and harmful behaviours. Based on the findings, it is suggested that key elements of adaptive agency in young people are social relationships and trust, as well as support of their achievement and competence.

ABSTRACT Access to legal services is argued to be an integral part of inclusive growth. This paper examines how litigation demand responds to an increased supply of legal professionals, that is, supply‐induced litigation, in a developing economy using a newly constructed city‐level panel dataset of litigation rate, law firms and socioeconomic variables from China throughout 2013–23. Our empirical analysis reaches several conclusions. We find that an increase in the number of law firms has a positive and significant effect on the litigation rate, which supports supply‐induced litigation. This result is robust to the instrument variable (IV) estimation and several robustness checks. Further, we find that the supply‐induced litigation potentially attributes to a better matching between lawyers and clients. Finally, we find that supply‐induced litigation is more pronounced for cities with higher social trust. In other words, formal and informal institutions, such as social trust, are complementary in driving the use of the judicial system.

Accreditation and certification are fundamental pillars for consolidating quality in higher education institutions. This article analyzes the processes, criteria, and perspectives of accreditation as a quality assurance mechanism, as well as the role that certifications play in validating institutional and academic standards. A theoretical and regulatory review is undertaken to understand their impact on contemporary university management, highlighting the need for comprehensive, transparent, and continuous improvement-oriented evaluation models. The results of the analysis show that accreditation not only guarantees educational quality but also strengthens accountability, institutional competitiveness, and social trust in universities. Finally, perspectives are presented that point to a more strategic, evidence-based university management aligned with international standards.

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence in daily life has intensified the phenomenon of AI personification, where human-like qualities such as intentionality, consciousness, and moral capacity are attributed to artificial systems. Although personified AI can enhance usability and enrich interaction experiences, its ethical implications remain insufficiently examined within a comprehensive moral framework. This study provides a systematic normative analysis of AI personification by integrating deontological ethics, utilitarian evaluation, and virtue ethics. A systematic literature review was conducted using major academic databases to identify relevant conceptual, empirical, and philosophical works published between 2015 and 2025. The conceptual analysis clarifies that AI personification is fundamentally an attributional process rather than a reflection of genuine cognitive or moral capacities. The deontological assessment indicates that personification practices conflict with core moral duties due to their reliance on misleading representations that undermine autonomy, dignity, and honesty. The utilitarian evaluation reveals that although personification offers functional benefits in certain task-oriented contexts, its aggregate consequences produce a slight net negative effect, particularly due to risks to psychological well-being, relational authenticity, and long-term social trust. The virtue ethics analysis identifies the most serious concerns, showing that habitual engagement with personified AI can erode essential character traits such as honesty, wisdom, autonomy, and authenticity, thereby hindering human flourishing. Integrative comparison across these frameworks demonstrates strong convergence on the need to impose strict normative constraints and prioritize transparency and autonomy-preserving design principles. The study concludes that while limited forms of personification may be ethically permissible under controlled conditions, emotionally oriented and relationally immersive applications require substantial restrictions to protect individual and societal well-being.

Social media and social capital revisited: social trust and community satisfaction as catalysts of civic participation

Assessing the Relative Importance of Sociocontextual Determinants of Depression: A Random Forest Analysis of Young Korean Adults.

Social media and social capital revisited: social trust and community satisfaction as catalysts of civic participation

This article critically examines the misquotation of Qur’an 49:6 in modern media and highlights the indispensable role of siyāq (context) in understanding the verse accurately. In digital media environments, Qur’anic verses are often selectively extracted to support ideological narratives separated from historical context, linguistic structure, and classical exegesis. Qur’an 49:6—invoked frequently in discussions on fact-checking and information reliability is commonly interpreted in a superficial manner that obscures its theological foundations. Through a contextual reading that incorporates siyāq–sibāq, the socio-historical background of Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt, and classical exegetical discussions by al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr, al-Qurṭubī, and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, this study demonstrates how decontextualized usage produces significant semantic distortion. The analysis evaluates examples of misquotation in modern media and explores their influence on social trust and ethical communication. The study concludes that responsible interpretation of Qur’anic discourse requires close attention to context, and that misquotation undermines both textual meaning and the Qur’an’s moral framework regarding justice, reliability, and communal integrity.

Social trust and management appointment in family firms

E-shopper innovativeness and parcel locker adoption: Mediating roles of social influence and trust, and the moderating impact of transaction costs

Production performance and risk in shrimp farming: The role of social trust belief

This study examines how social trust affects corporate leverage manipulation and how ESG disclosure shapes this relationship. Using data on Chinese A-share listed firms from 2006 to 2023, the results show that higher social trust is linked to more manipulation. This suggests that strong trust in the local environment may weaken outside oversight and create room for opportunistic financial behavior. The study also shows that ESG disclosure reduces this risk. When firms provide clearer information, investors and other stakeholders can monitor them more effectively, which limits the influence of trust-based leniency. After addressing endogeneity and testing alternative measures, the results remain stable. Overall, the findings reveal the double-sided nature of informal institutions and show that ESG disclosure can serve as an important tool for restraining opportunistic actions.

This study develops standardization-oriented criteria for merchandise expansion in large-scale outlets and designated duty-free stores, a decision context that requires the simultaneous consideration of operational efficiency, regulatory compliance, and local economic impacts. An AHP-based hierarchical model was constructed, comprising three domains, standardization capability, social trust and responsibility, and market suitability and sustainability, and nine evaluation elements. Results indicate that standardization capability is the most influential factor across both channels, suggesting that the feasibility of introducing new merchandise depends primarily on its compatibility with existing operational systems. Market suitability and sustainability also carry substantial weight, reflecting the multidimensional nature of merchandise expansion, which must balance operational stability with market competitiveness. Social trust and responsibility had the lowest relative importance, particularly in duty-free stores where strict regulatory frameworks already ensure compliance, limiting its function as a differentiating criterion. Outlets emphasize external standardization, whereas duty-free stores emphasize internal procedural alignment. This study presents the first quantitative comparison of these heterogeneous retail formats through a unified standardization framework and offers practical implications for merchandise selection criteria and large-scale retail policy design.

This study focuses on TikTok’s growing influence as a social commerce platform among Generation Z users in Indonesia. It examines the impact of Social Commerce Information Sharing on the formation of Social Support and Trust, as well as their effects on Purchase Intention. The moderating role of Perceived Privacy Risk between Social Support and Trust is also explored. Using a quantitative design with Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modeling (CB-SEM), data were gathered from 230 online respondents. Adapted from Tseng et al. (2023), the research model aims to generate both academic contributions and strategic recommendations for enhancing TikTok Shop’s business performance.

This study examines the factors influencing customer awareness in personal banking security, with particular emphasis on the Sri Lankan context, where rising cyber-fraud incidents highlight the need for stronger customer awareness. While prior research has focused on technology adoption and security behavior, evidence on the antecedents of customer awareness remains fragmented. A PRISMA-guided systematic literature review of thirty-eight empirical studies indexed in Scopus was conducted using Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) as the primary analytical framework. The review synthesizes findings related to threat appraisal, coping appraisal, and additional factors influencing awareness in digital banking security. The results show that self-efficacy and response efficacy are the most consistent drivers of awareness, while perceived severity and vulnerability show mixed effects. Social influence, fear, and trust further shape awareness beyond PMT’s core constructs. The findings are contextualized to Sri Lanka, offering insights to strengthen local banking security awareness strategies.

With the acceleration of digitalization, Chinas elderly population faces a severe challenge of the digital divide. This paper adopts case studies and bibliometric analysis methods, selects two typical cases of health code verification and QR code payment, and deeply analyzes the survival dilemmas faced by the elderly in the digital age in different social scenarios. The study found that the dilemma in the health code verification case mainly stems from the deprivation of rights caused by the lack of mandatory policies and technical adaptability; while the dilemma in the QR code payment case comes from the social exclusion caused by insufficient social support and trust crisis. Based on this, this paper proposes a two-dimensional analytical framework for the digital divide. From a comparative perspective between China and other countries, it proposes to build a digital social governance strategy of tiered inclusion, emphasizing inclusive innovation and intergenerational support. The aim is to provide theoretical reference and practical pathways for reducing digital inequality in an aging society.

Smallholder coconut plantation in Aceh Province faces increasing sustainability risks due to low farmer incomes driven by declining plantation areas, ageing trees, limited access to technology and extension services, and weak farmer institutions. Nevertheless, smallholder coconut plantations remain strategically important as a source of food, farmer income, industrial raw materials, employment opportunities, and environmental conservation. Therefore, strengthening farmers' capacity and resilience is crucial to effectively managing coconut-based farming. This study examines the interrelationships among farmer group functions, farmer group leadership, social capital, farmer resilience, farmer autonomy, and the sustainability of smallholder coconut farming. The study was conducted in 2014 in the Regencies of Aceh Besar, Simeulue, and Bireuen, using a survey of 277 coconut farmers. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). The study results show that the functions of farmer groups and the roles of their leaders had a positive and significant influence on autonomy, and social capital had a positive and significant influence on farmer resilience. Furthermore, farmer resilience was positively associated with farmer autonomy and coconut farming sustainability, and farmer group leadership also directly influenced farmer autonomy. To support the sustainability of smallholder coconut farming in Aceh, based on these findings, it is recommended that the government and regional governments strengthen social and institutional capacities through farmer groups, primarily through strengthening social networks and trust, enhancing the role of farmer group leaders as motivators and facilitators, and strengthening farmer groups as platforms for collective learning and cooperation.

Migrant workers have been a central force in China’s rapid urbanisation and economic expansion, yet they continue to experience multiple forms of social discrimination that may adversely affect their mental health. Using nationally representative data from the 2016 China Family Panel Studies, this study investigates the association between social discrimination and mental health outcomes among migrant workers, with a particular focus on discrimination related to income inequality and household registration status. Mental health is assessed using indicators of life satisfaction and depressive symptoms. The empirical results demonstrate that perceived social discrimination is significantly associated with lower life satisfaction and higher levels of depression among migrant workers. Further heterogeneity analyses reveal that these negative effects are more pronounced for male migrant workers and those belonging to the first generation of migrants, indicating substantial variation in vulnerability across demographic groups. To explore the underlying mechanisms, mediation analyses are conducted and show that interpersonal trust plays a critical role in linking discrimination to mental health outcomes. Experiences of unfair treatment reduce individuals’ trust in others, which in turn exacerbates feelings of social isolation and emotional distress. By identifying both differential effects and a key psychological pathway, this study contributes to the literature on social inequality and mental health by elucidating how structural and social discrimination jointly shape mental health disparities among migrant workers. The findings underscore the importance of addressing not only institutional sources of discrimination but also the erosion of social trust when designing interventions aimed at improving the well-being of migrant populations in urban contexts.

This study examines political communication strategies in the 2024 East Java gubernatorial election using Harold Lasswell’s Communication Model as the analytical framework. A qualitative descriptive approach was employed through in-depth interviews, field observations, and document analysis. The findings show that effective political communication is built on social trust, cultural values, and adaptability to digital media. Candidate campaign teams combined face-to-face interactions with online media to deliver their messages. Analysis of Lasswell’s five elements—Who, Says What, In Which Channel, To Whom, and With What Effect—demonstrates that campaign success depends on communicator credibility, message relevance, and emotional connection with the public. The results align with previous studies emphasizing the importance of integrating online and offline communication to enhance political participation. Overall, the study highlights that political communication success goes beyond message strength; it also relies on authenticity, ethics, and public engagement. These findings expand Lasswell’s theory by showing its relevance in the digital era and its contribution to strengthening local democracy in Indonesia.