Trust and Volunteering: Selection or Causation? Evidence From a 4 Year Panel Study

By René Bekkers. 2012

147 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Participation in voluntary associations is often believed to make citizens more trusting of others. This paper reports longitudinal analyses of a time intensive form of participation—volunteering—and generalized social trust using data from three waves of the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Study spanning 4 years (2002–2006; n = 692) refuting this belief. Trust is relatively stable over a 4 year period (0.73). Changes in volunteering are not related to changes in trust. Trust is higher among volunteers mainly because of selective attrition: persons with low trust are more likely to quit volunteering.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0faf962497ac6ef61371772e716ec5cba2955ae6

How researchers see this paper

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In Sociology and Political Science

1. P. V. van Lange
2. René Bekkers
3. Erik van Ingen
4. Pamala Wiepking
5. Bogdan Wojciszke
6. F. Handy

Citations in the corpus

• Generalized Trust Four Lessons From Genetics and Culture (2015, background): “low) trust in other people are more likely to behave cooperatively in the face of uncertainty and conflicting interests, are more likely to sustain volunteering activities, report greater life satisfaction, exhibit greater physical health, and even live longer (e.g., Balliet & Van Lange, 2013a; Bare”
• Generalized Trust Through Civic Engagement? Evidence from Five National Panel Studies (2015, background): “Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to E. J. van Ingen, Department of Sociology, Tilburg University, P.O. box 90153, 5000 LE Tilburg, The Netherlands.”