The Impact of Social Capital on Satisfaction with National Policy

Abstract

This study analyzes the impact of social capital on national policy satisfaction in Korea. Although social capital has been investigated in previous studies, most of them have been limited to the local government level. This study concerns national policies and uses data from the 2007 Survey of Citizen Perceptions of the Public Sector. In total 1,200 people responded from across the country. Using factor analysis, social capital factors were extracted: participation in political networks, participation in nonpolitical networks, trust in others, and altruism. Trust in others was statistically significant to all levels of policy satisfaction; however, other variables were significant only to certain policies. Unexpectedly, participation in political networks, by means of political demonstrations and online debate, was not significant with regard to satisfaction with any policy.