Effects of Giving & Volunteering On Generalized Trust: Examination by Propensity Score Matching Analysis

Research Objective This study aims to examine the relationship between civic engagement (giving and volunteering) and trust by employing Propensity Score Matching. If engagement is effective on trust, promoting giving and volunteering can be an important social strategy to build social capital.

Literature Review In the relationship between trust and individual giving and volunteering, Uslaner (2002) argues that the causal mechanism runs from trust to giving. In the discussions on social capital, Putnam (2000) claims that civic engagement breeds a general social trust in fellow citizens. It is necessary to examine the relationship by using more rigorous data and more advanced analysis methods such as the method of propensity score matching.

Methods and Data To examine the relationship, this study employs the method of Propensity Score Matching (Rosenbaum, 1983 & 1984; Rubin, 1974; Sianesi, 2006) that permits the comparisons between experimental group and control group by diverse matching methods, as in experimental design, on general cross-sectional data which originally is not collected for experimental observation. This method is useful to compare the effects of diverse civic engagements (participation in giving and participation in volunteering; regularity in giving and regularity in volunteering; and participation in combined behaivor of giving and volunteering; and regularity in combined behaivor of giving and volunteering) on generalized trust. For the research objective, this study uses the first year data of Seoul Welfare Panel that was randomly sampled from 12 million citizens in 2009 by Seoul Metropolitan Welfare Foundation and Korea Research Institute. The first year sample is composed of over 8,000 citizens and more than 3,000 households. This sample is collected to observe general life, work, welfare needs, civic engagement, trust, happiness, depression, life satisfaction and others of the citizens in Seoul. In using the method of propensity score matching, general demographic variables will be controlled in the logistic regression for propensity identification.

Resutls Matching citizens with Controlling for demographic variables, there are significant results that all of citiznes having civic engagement (participation in giving and participation in volunteering; regularity in giving and regularity in volunteering; and participation in combined behaivor of giving and volunteering; and regularity in combined behaivor of giving and volunteering) showed higher levels of generalized trust that those of citizens without civic engagement. Particularly, citizens showed higher generalized trust scores in the following order: regularity in combined behaivor of giving and volunteering; regularity in volunteering; regularity in giving; participation in combined behaivor of giving and volunteering; participation in volunteering; and participation in giving.

Contribution This study would provide empirical evidence for the importance of civic engagement to enhance citizen's trust, eventually social capital. In addition, this study would promote our understanding on the meanings of civic engagment in social issues and social work fields where most of citizens' giving and volunteering are embedded. Finally, this study will contribute to setting a knowledge foundation for future research on the relationship between civic engagement and generalized trust and lead to more rigorous empirical study on this topic.