Social Capital, Post-Materialism and Institutional Confidence in South Korea : 1981-2003

Abstract

This paper empirically tests recent theoretical explanations on the individual aspects of people who trust or distrust institutions. Based on recent literature in political sociology, I hypothesize that social capital as well as cultural values should affect people's tendency to put confidence in political or civil institutions. Individual-level survey data from several sources covering periods between 1981 and 2003 are analyzed to test whether and how people's social capital and cultural values affect their level of institutional confidence. The results from regression models show that social trust and social participation, two aspects of social capital, tend to have positive effects on confidence in both public and civic institutions. Significance of effects varies by year and is more pronounced for public institutions. Post-materialist value has negative effect on confidence in public institutions, but has no significant effect on confidence in civic institutions. Despite some variance in statistical significance of the effects, the relationship between independent and dependent variables appears consistent across surveys.