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This paper explores the challenges early career researchers (ECRs) face in academia and the benefits of being part of a distributed peer mentoring network. The study highlights the importance of social capital and emotional and motivational support in promoting wellbeing and career development, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using both qualitative and quantitative methods, the paper examines the impact of a collaborative environment on individual productivity and the development of clear goals. The study reveals that the supportive network of like-minded, ambitious people across borders and hierarchies offers the opportunity to identify with others and create a sense of belonging. The paper concludes by emphasizing the need for qualitative methods of social network analysis to investigate the meaning of social structures in the career development of ECRs.

China’s rural areas have long been backward in development, and many villages have completed poverty alleviation with the help of the government. Facing the requirements of sustainable development, it is necessary to change the development path, continuously increase social capital, and effectively connect with government investment resources. The existing research and practice mostly construct the strategy of social capital from the inside of the village, lacking interaction with the superior government. This paper argues for the method of planners’ intervention. The advantage is that it links the power of government and villagers, creates a perceptible, experiential, valuable material environment, and promotes collective action. Through this process, the knowledge interaction and social relations in the village can be improved. The purpose of this paper is to study how participatory planning affects the content and mechanism of this process mentioned above. Taking Hongtang village as a case study, we analyze the in-depth changes that participatory planning has brought to the rural space and social level. In the participatory planning practice of Hongtang village, college rural planners took a small vegetable garden as the breakthrough point to stimulate villagers’ participation. In the process of the upgrade, planners evolved the interaction between the village committee and villagers in the path of IMEE, which is “Intervene, Motivate, Enable, Empower”. Moreover, planners always maintained contact with the higher-level government. Through the upgrade of small vegetable gardens, the villagers’ initiative was brought into practice, the social capital was fully explored, and an effective link with the government’s resource allocation was realized.

The recovery of the global economy in the aftermath of COVID-19 faces enormous challenges. Ensuring stable income growth of the population has become an important means for developing countries to ensure sustained economic development. Raising the overall income of the population is a public initiative that benefits all citizens; therefore, governments of developing countries should promote the implementation of relevant public policies and the provision of public goods to ensure that existing economic instruments can benefit the entire population. In this regard, public space, as a typical form of public good, may play an important role in promoting the benefits of existing economic policies for all residents. This paper examines how residents’ use of public space contributes to their income growth through social capital. Hypotheses are tested based on an econometric analysis of 1565 questionnaires received from Chinese workers. The results show that residents’ use of public space can indeed be an important way to increase their income, which is realized through the enhancement of social capital. The research presented in this paper provides a new influence variable of public space to improve residents’ income. Further, it improves people’s understanding of the three classical concepts—public space, social capital, and income—by establishing the logical connection and theoretical explanation of physical space, emotional space, and value space in human society. The conclusions of this paper highlight the important role of public space in urban and rural development planning.

Although the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic has appears to have subsided in most parts of the world, nevertheless, in addition to six million deaths, it has yielded unprecedented challenges in the economy, energy, education, urban services, and healthcare sectors. Meanwhile, based on some reports, smart solutions and technologies have had significant success in achieving pandemic-resilient cities. This paper reviews smart city initiatives and contributions to the prevention and treatment of coronavirus disease, as well as reducing its destructive impact, leading towards pandemic-resilient economic and health systems. Furthermore, the situational awareness contributions are reviewed in pandemic-resilient governance. The main contribution of this study is to describe the construction of social capital in smart cities as a facilitator in creating a pandemic-resilient society in crisis through two analyses. Moreover, this research describes smart cities’ energy as interconnection of energy hubs (EHs) that leads to a high level of resiliency in dealing with the main challenges of the electricity industry during the pandemic. Energy-hub-based smart cities can contribute to designing pandemic-resilient energy infrastructure, which can significantly affect resilience in economic and health infrastructure. In brief, this paper describes a smart city as a pandemic-resilient city in the economic, energy, and health infrastructural, social, and governmental areas.

This paper discusses the capacity of communities to be resilient in the face of disasters. This is the question of what allows communities to rebuild after a major destructive event and preferably to “build back better.” The paper lists six qualities of resilient communities drawn from the literature researching these events: organizations are flexible; they have strong leadership; there is strong community learning; they are effective at collective problem solving and cooperation; social capital and civil society are strong; and communities effectively engage with helping institutions beyond their boundaries. The paper relates each quality to social capital, to the ways the three types of social capital—bonding, bridging, and linking—are interconnected, and to preparatory methods that might be used to strengthen social capital so that communities may be more resilient.

High-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in the high-quality economic development in a country. Nevertheless, due to the difficulties banks or other financial institutions have in accurately assessing their credit levels, financing difficulties have become the biggest bottleneck restricting the progress of high-tech SMEs, and therefore, this paper aims to construct a credit evaluation indicator system of high-tech SMEs. Based on prior studies and the characteristics of high-tech SMEs, this paper constructs an indicator system from financial and nonfinancial dimensions, including 22 measurement indicators reflecting the operation status, development potential, quality, and competitiveness of an enterprise. Principal component analysis (PCA) and a Delphi-analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method are employed for the evaluation. This indicator system innovates from the social capital perspective, and by setting more novel nonfinancial indicators, the system achieves a more comprehensive evaluation of credit level. This paper also performs an empirical application using the data from 125 enterprises in the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region of China, and further performs an empirical study on the external environment’s impact on the credit level. The empirical results all show consistency with existing studies, verifying the workability and validity of the indicator system we constructed.

Protected areas are a fundamental element for the protection of ecological integrity and, in some cases, the livelihood of local communities worldwide. They are also embedded in socio-ecological systems, and their management is subject to various political, economic, and social influences. Good governance of protected areas is recognized as a decisive aspect of ecological conservation, which is at risk in institutional contexts where there is a weak scope of action alongside issues with misrecognition of key actors and their representation in procedures. In this context, the present study case aims to assess the performance of the Río Negro National Park governance system in terms of effectiveness and justice to enable the identification of strategies to improve this protected area governance system for the achievement of its desired outcomes. Using the social-ecological systems approach, this paper proposes an analytical framework for the performance assessment, including both the effectiveness and justice of the governance of socio-ecological systems, stemming from the socio-ecological justice framework. It uses mixed methods based on semi-structured in-depth interviews supplemented by a focus group discussion, participant observation, and secondary data analysis. Results show that the governance of Río Negro National Park is negatively impacted by low-capacity, a lack of human, financial, and technical resources, as well as the lack of recognition of the indigenous community of the Yshiro and the rural community as key actors, leading to a lack of representation of their interests, values, and knowledge in norm-making and decision-making processes. The findings unveil some windows for improvement through better-designed environmental policies specifically based on collective action and social learning. The results demonstrate that effectiveness and justice influence each other and, therefore, are deeply intertwined. From the assessment conducted, the paper highlights the components of the governance system that should be improved to achieve good governance of the protected area as a socio-ecological system, promoting the ecological integrity and the dignity of life (socio-ecological justice) of the individuals and communities that are part of this system.

The present study aims to evaluate the relationship between social capital and cash holdings in firms. The population under study comprises all listed companies on the Tehran Stock Exchange. A total of 175 firms (1050 year-firm) were selected from 2014 to 2020 to evaluate the relationship between variables using the systematic elimination method. Moreover, the moderating role of financial reporting quality in the relationship between social capital and cash holdings was also studied. This paper used multivariable linear regression (panel data) and the EViews software to implement the study’s objectives. The present study results show a negative relationship between the social capital of firms and cash holdings and a positive association between social capital and financial reporting quality. In other words, cash holdings drop with the increase in social capital. Further, financial reporting quality improves with the increase in social capital. The financial reporting quality moderates the relationship between the social capital of firms and cash holdings. This paper indicates that the region’s social capital, where the firm is located, has a significant role in contributing to its cash value. The current study is the first to assess social capital structure in the cash holdings literature. The impacts of social capital contribute to financial outputs. Social capital has a positive economic result against strong cooperation norms and dense social networks. Few studies analyzed the effect of social capital on firms’ decision making. In this area, the present study contributes to the literature development and the impact of social capital on firms’ results.

In the new era of sustainable urban development, neighbourhood renewal has received increasing attention. Social capital, which can be defined as the value embedded in the relationship between residents, plays a significant role in the process of neighbourhood renewal. However, within the current neighbourhood renewal knowledge domain, there is a lack of clear and systematic understanding of the various components that make up social capital, how they are formed, and how they impact neighbourhood renewal. With the rise in neighbourhood renewal projects worldwide, it has become increasingly important to facilitate better knowledge in this area. To this end, this study focuses on filling this knowledge gap. First, based on the review of 84 journal papers related to social capital in neighbourhood renewal, a research framework is developed for analysing social capital in the context of neighbour renewal. Using this framework as a lens, a critical review of the literature is then conducted. Finally, through an in-depth discussion, this study presents the main concepts of social capital, its formulation and its association with neighbourhood renewal. This review paper can be used as an important reference for researchers globally interested in the topic of social capital in neighbourhood renewal.

All over Europe, the rapidly increasing number of newly arrived migrant students (NAMS) not only transformed countries into ethnically diverse societies but also led to various challenges for the educational system in general and its schools and teachers in particular. In Flanders, education for NAMS has several limitations, such as an overrepresentation of NAMS in vocational tracks and a lack of interaction between reception and mainstream education teachers. The central thesis of this paper is that building up networks between the actors involved in the education for NAMS in Flanders may offer a solution for much of the formulated critiques. The paper starts off with an overview of the Flemish educational system and pays particular attention to reception education, its central actors, and the issues they are experiencing. Next, an argumentation for social networks as a potential solution for the critiques is built up, followed by a potential future agenda for education for NAMS in Flanders, riddled with network-related opportunities. The central aim of the paper is to generate fresh insight into education for NAMS, by linking its shortcomings to the strength of building up networks and collaboration, or put differently, connecting the dots.

This paper explores the role of social capital in contributing to the success of a new breed of organizations known as ‘blank check companies’ or special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) that are set up solely to target and acquire listed companies as a fast-track route to gain listing status in the stock market. The paper is a case study of Pershing Square Holdings Ltd., St. Peter Port, UK (PSH), which launched SPAC IPOs (Initial Public Offerings), Pershing Square Tontine Holdings Ltd., New York, NY, USA (PSTH), which succeeded in raising the largest capital from influential investors in 2020. Social capital theory is employed to provide theoretical structure for the analysis. Using annual reports, publicly available information on the internet, as well as social media platforms related to the company and its strategy, the authors critically analyse and highlight how the Tontine’s founder and his team utilized their structural, relational, and cognitive social capital to attract investors and gained recognition as the most successful SPAC IPO in the market in 2020. The authors found the ability to structure a SPAC IPO that departs from a typical SPAC, and the choice of timing to enter the SPAC market resulted in an over subscription and higher market valuation ratings of its IPO, as well as allowed the sponsor to be selective of its investors. This is the first study to address the significance of social capital at the individual and organizational level in creating value for SPAC IPOs. Potential investors can gain understanding and insights on the mechanics of SPAC IPOs and the importance of the founder’s social capital in ensuring successful investment. Successful SPAC IPOs will create interest in the marketplace and enhance the value of investment for investors and helped private companies to get listed faster.

In this paper, the author investigates rural Chinese citizens’ encounters of structural and institutional inequalities and social (im)mobility. The author addresses social (im)mobility from a holistic perspective (i.e., in institutional, occupational, social, educational, cultural and political dimensions). In this regard, the author explores if a range of parental disadvantages serve as significant hindrances to the acquisition of social mobilising opportunities among the next generations in rural Chinese contexts. Here a holistic presentation helps understand the nuanced relationship between institutional barriers (i.e., rural hukou status) and alternative obstacles to social mobility; and explore, in part, how parental inheritance of rural hukou status would bar individuals’ from socially mobilising and result in some forms of unsustainability. Previous research on China restrictively measures social (im)mobility from limited perspectives, failing to fully and accurately reflect the extent of social (im)mobility Chinese populations face. This paper is a comprehensive literature review where relevant Chinese literature, exclusively found in the e-library system of the University of Cambridge, is included and thoroughly discussed. Articles that include the keywords of “hukou”, “China”, “social mobility” and (a) “economic”, (b) “social”, (c) “cultural”, (d) “linguistic” or (e) “political” are extensively studied, in a hope to understand the existing scholarship on multifaceted social (im)mobility in Chinese contexts. The author argues that, despite the 2014 hukou reform, further loosening the requirements for rural-to-urban hukou conversion should be prioritised by the Central Government of China in order to ensure the rural-urban divide and structural and institutional inequalities rural hukou holders face can curtain.

To actively respond to the challenges posed by population aging, people are paying more and more attention to healthy behavioral lifestyles, and the impact of social capital as an informal system on health behaviors cannot be ignored. This paper explores the impact of social capital on health behaviors of middle-aged and older adults based on 2020 CHARLS data. Using binary logistic regression models, we discussed the association between social capital and five health behaviors. The results suggest that structural social capital significantly increases physical activity and physical examination behaviors among middle-aged and older adults but also decreases the probability of abstinence behaviors. Cognitive social capital increases the probability that middle-aged and older adults will have a reasonable amount of sleep and physical activity. However, it also decreases the probability that smoking cessation behaviors will occur. Further attention needs to be paid to the role of social capital, the creation of a harmonious social environment and the enhancement of social trust, the strengthening of communities and grass-roots social organizations, and the provision of more platforms for the participation of middle-aged and older adults in social activities, to improve the quality of the healthy lives of middle-aged and older adults and, in turn, to promote the establishment of healthy behaviors.

Widespread use of digital information technology is having a significant impact on economic growth and people’s well-being. This paper assesses the mediating role of social capital in the impact of digital information technology on multidimensional poverty. Due to differences in regional, industrial structure and other factors, digital information technology has different impacts on urban and rural residents. In this paper, the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) database is used for data, and a mediating effect model is used to study the problem. The digital information technology use was found to enhance social capital from social network, social participation and social trust, and subsequently alleviates multidimensional poverty. The results indicate that social trust plays a more significant mediating role than social capital and social participation on the impact of digital information technology on multidimensional poverty. Furthermore, the results reveal that the use of digital information technology has varying effects on poverty reduction among different income groups, with a much higher effect on low-income groups. However, the mediating effect of social capital in high-income groups is higher than that in low-income groups. In particular, social capital in the top 25% of income groups has the highest mediating effect. In the heterogeneity analysis between urban and rural areas, it is found that the multidimensional poverty situation in urban areas is significantly better than that in rural areas, because urban residents have a higher use of digital information, and at the same time, the quality of social capital in urban and rural groups is different, leading to the difference in the effect of digital information technology on poverty reduction of multidimensional poverty. Based on the results of the study, we believe that the use of digital information technology has actually improved the multi-dimensional poverty status of all groups, and social capital plays a key mediating role in it. Relying on the progress of digital information technology, we can build more convenient social network. Establish more adequate channels of information communication, enhance social trust and social participation, and alleviate multidimensional poverty.

The wide circulation of conspiracy narratives and their frequent intertwining with populist rhetoric is both an element of concern and a topic of intense scientific and philosophical debate. The depth of the link between conspiracy theories and populism represents a crucial issue whose comprehension can facilitate understanding their specific nature and the factors behind their diffusion in public communication. To this end, it is necessary to cultivate an interdisciplinary approach and great critical attention, eschewing monocausal explanations. This paper addresses the question of the essentially political nature of conspiracism, confronting the recent epistemological debate that, by putting the positivist paradigm aside, has sought to explore and understand the socio-cultural roots of conspiracy rhetoric, with its sceptical, antagonistic and hermetic traits. By integrating the reflections of epistemologists such as Cassam or Harris with the considerations of political scientists such as Taggart and with Schmitt’s radical reflections on politics, it is perhaps possible to reintegrate the different approaches to populist conspiracism into an overall social genealogical perspective, thanks also to recent demographic elaborations. Thus, we could ascribe the spread of conspiracism to the prevalence in societies of a hyperpolitical discursive regime, i.e., founded on the principle of opposition, without the possibility of compromise, between different groups and interests. At the basis of such Manichaeism, it is plausible to place in the first place the growing inequalities and related social disintegration, which hinder the circulation of trust and recognition between individuals and groups, thus ending up undermining democracy at its roots, as a political system that legitimises and thus peacefully regulates conflict.

South Africa continues to be marked by high youth unemployment. This paper investigates youth labor market perspectives in northern South Africa in the light of data from the Livelihoods, Religion and Youth Survey. In addition to standard explanatory variabless of labor market outcomes, it explores whether the ‘soft’ factors of social capital and religion might contribute to youth’s labor market success. Methodologically, the study draws on descriptive statistics and the estimation of linear probability models. The results indicate that religious social capital goes along with improved labor market success, while there is no indication in the data that (non-religious) social capital or religiosity are positively correlated with labor market performance among the youth in the sample. The social capital created in religious communities seems to contribute to youth labor market success. Further research should investigate how these structures can serve as models for the improvement of government interventions aiming at improving youth labor market outcomes. Moreover, the results are in line with the findings of previous research on spatial mismatches in the labor market and highlight the need for job creation, particularly in rural areas.

One of the most formidable socio-economic challenges which Christian communities are facing today is the growing dominance of neoliberalism. From wheat fields in Brazil to Wall Street in New York City, neoliberalism is marching on everywhere with its massive credit (or credit money). The purpose of this paper is to address a key structural injustice of neoliberalism—the deepening colonization of “social capital” by “financial capital.” Since the 1980s, a new economic process known as “financialization” has structurally changed the global economic system entailing an extreme income and wealth gap between the haves and the have nots. It has also rendered a countless number of ordinary people vulnerable to various types of debt entrapment while destroying the environment on a global scale. Behind all these forms of social and natural disintegration lies a crucial neoliberal apparatus fueled by credit. This paper engages in such problems by attempting to reconnect the lost link between social capital and financial capital. In doing so, it first analyzes the genealogical origin of the separation between financial capital and social capital. The author then comes up with ethical principles to re-anchor financial capital in social capital through a critical and interdisciplinary exploration.

We are living in an age of concern for mental health and wellbeing. The objective of the research presented in this paper is to investigate the perceived health, social value and happiness benefits of urban agriculture (UA) by focusing on home and community food gardens in South Australia. The results reported in this paper are from “Edible Gardens”, a citizen science project designed to investigate the social value, productivity and resource efficiency of UA in South Australia. Methods include an online survey and in-field garden data collection. Key findings include: dominant home gardener motivations were the produce, enjoyment, and health, while dominant community gardener motivations were enjoyment, connection to others and the produce. Exploratory factor analysis revealed four key factors: Tranquillity and Timeout, Develop and Learn Skills, the Produce, and Social Connection. The key difference between home and community gardeners was an overall social connection. Although home gardeners did not appear to actively value or desire inter-household social connection, this does not mean they do not value or participate in other avenues of social connection, such as via social learning sources or by sharing food with others. The combined results from this research regarding health and wellbeing, social connection and happiness support the premise that engagement in home or community food gardening may provide a preventative or supportive role for gardener health and wellbeing, regardless of whether it is a conscious motivation for participation.

Sport, physical activity and social cohesion are increasingly linked within the academic literature. Indeed, studies recognise both the importance of social cohesion for promoting physical activity and the potential of sport to support social cohesion. Up until now, however, the ways in which social cohesion has been defined and measured in the context of sport and physical activity have not been the subject of much academic attention. Through a scoping review of studies measuring social cohesion in the sport and physical activity context, we aim to uncover how social cohesion is defined and measured, thus allowing us to better grasp how the concept is understood and operationalised in this field. As such, full-text inclusion occurred when studies quantitatively measured social cohesion through a questionnaire/survey instrument in connection with sport or physical activity participation or within programmes using sport to foster social cohesion. A total of 40 papers were included in the review, showing broad support for the argument that social cohesion is positively related to sport or physical activity participation. However, the retained texts engage on only a surface level with the concept of social cohesion, with around half not defining the term and the associated measurement tools using only a fraction of the dimensions typically associated with social cohesion. To conclude, we propose future directions to enhance conceptual engagement with and measurement of social cohesion.

The referral system in health care has been noted as very influential in determining which services are accessed and when. Nonetheless, existing studies have relied on specific measurable factors relating to health personnel, transportation and communication infrastructure, and finance to explain the challenges facing the referral policy in developing countries. While this is understandable, the role of social capital remains mostly uncharted even though it is implicit in the well-known lay referral system. Using various facets of the social capital concept, this paper empirically examines how the resources embedded in both structural and cognitive aspects of social relationships influence knowledge of, and adherence to, referral policy. This study is based on semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted with 79 adults in the Ashanti Region of Ghana in 2015. Of the 79 participants, 28 lived in urban areas and 51 in rural localities. Eight health personnel and eight community leaders also contributed to the study. Additionally, six focus group discussions were held. The findings indicated that both cognitive and structural forms of social capital considerably underpinned the ability and willingness of people to adhere to the referral process. Moreover, the role of social capital was double-barrelled. It contributed in a significant way to encouraging or dissuading potential patients from rightly embracing the policy. In addition, precepts of social capital reinforced both positive and adverse effects of the other determinants of the policy such as finance and transportation. However, the magnitude of such impact was linked to how ‘resourceful’ and ‘trustworthy’ one’s available social acquaintances were. The paper suggests that a cautious engagement with social capital will make it a potentially powerful tool for understanding the gaps in and improving the effectiveness of referral policy.

In order to provide better marketing services to customers, companies often want to obtain as much customer information as possible. However, for customers, as well as leading to better service, information disclosure may also put them at risk of information leakage, so customers may respond in two different ways to firms’ invitations to disclose information. This paper applies theories of social capital and communication boundary management to developing a framework for understanding the psychological mechanisms behind individuals’ responses to disclosure invitations and their subsequent purchase behavior. The results of this study show that under the combined effect of social capital and communication boundaries, subsequent purchases show an inverted-U-shaped relationship, initially increasing and then decreasing as the level of disclosure increases. Furthermore, because the social capital of high-level members and firms is higher than that of low-level members, it moderates the inverted-U-shaped relationship; that is, the higher the level of membership, the more moderate the inverted-U-shaped relationship.

Promoting withdrawal from rural homesteads (WRH) is a significant way of enhancing the efficient use of homesteads, improving the living standards of farmers, and promoting new urbanization. Social networks provide farmers with necessary resources and play an important role in the practices of WRH. Based on a literature review, this paper divides farmers’ social networks into the emotional social network, the economic social network, and the political social network and analyzes the impacts of social networks on farmers’ willingness and behavior regarding WRH using the binary logistic regression model, based on the data of 299 peasant households in Sichuan Province. The following finds are established: (1) the economic social network significantly and negatively affects farmers’ willingness and behavior regarding WRH, while the political social network has a positive impact on farmers’ willingness and behavior regarding WRH; (2) the emotional social network significantly and positively affects farmers’ willingness regarding WRH, but it does not have a significant effect on farmers’ behavior regarding WRH; and (3) the economic social network and political social network exhibit opposite influences on the transition from farmers’ willingness to behavior regarding WRH. We conclude that social networks play a vital role in affecting farmers’ willingness and behavior regarding WRH. The research suggests that expanding the scope of farmers’ interactions and social networks can be helpful in implementing WRH. The employment training system and social security system should also be improved.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the connection between local development projects and the residents’ social capital in Bohol, The Philippines. From this perspective, we hypothesized that social behaviors of local farmers are influenced by the availability of canal irrigation due to the collective water management required in irrigated societies. By combining the results of the ultimatum game (UG) with a household survey on 245 villagers in Bohol, this paper (1) measures the degree of social capital at the individual level and (2) quantifies the effects of irrigation on social capital by controlling household as well as individual characteristics. Moreover, we employed a Spatial Autoregressive model to explore the spatial effects and social contexts of farmers’ behavioral patterns. The empirical results show that the level of measured social behavior is strongly associated with access to community irrigation water and asset holdings. Additionally, increased physical distance between residents leads to a decrease in social capital, or interdependency, among them. The results suggest that community engagement (e.g., irrigation management committee and turnout service association) with local development projects would not only improve agricultural productivity but also enhance social relationships among farmers, highlighting its importance.

Sociological scholarship, economic theory, and empirical studies all indicate that interpersonal relationships are valuable productive assets and deserve to be formally incorporated into the study of human development. This paper employs the India Human Development Survey to examine, using OLS and logistic regressions, the impact of different dimensions of social capital on multiple proxies for household welfare. Social capital in the form of memberships in local community organizations and social network connections has a statistically and economically significant association with household consumption expenditures, physical asset ownership, and the probability of a household living in poverty. Households that are members of any formal community organization are expected to have higher monthly per capita consumption expenditures than households without any memberships. Estimates of a similar magnitude are observed when modeling a household’s stock of physical assets, a longer-term indicator of economic welfare. These indicators of social capital are also significantly associated with lower odds of a household living below the poverty line. Organizational memberships and social networks are also associated with considerably higher odds of a household assessing its own economic situation positively. Overall, social capital is a catalyst for increasing household welfare along multiple dimensions, and, therefore, a critical area of focus for economists, sociologists, development practitioners, and policymakers.

In this paper, we present the results of an experiment conducted in Italy on trusting behaviour. Our subjects participated in a trust game and filled in a questionnaire on trust and trustworthiness based on the attitudinal questions reported in the European Value Survey. The aims of the research are twofold. Firstly, using the experimental dataset, we construct two measures of trustworthiness among all recipients in the experiment, one based on the questionnaires’ answers and another based on the strategy method. We then compare the ex-ante behavioural decision to trust (before participants are allocated to a group) with the ex-post decision to trust (after participants are allocated to a group and trustors are informed of the level of trustworthiness of all the recipients who have been randomly allocated to each group). Our main finding is that trust strongly varies once the information is disclosed to trustors. The effect on trust is greater when the strategy method is used. Secondly, we compare the behavioural measure of trust with the attitudinal measures of trust and trustworthiness and find that there is only a weak correlation between the two measures, thus confirming, for the Italian case, similar findings in country-based studies on trust.

European sport policies and programmes have increasingly focused on promoting social cohesion. Often presented as a multi-dimensional concept, social cohesion is considered the ‘glue’ that holds societies together and is seen as essential to addressing common challenges. However, the term remains contested, and it is not always clear how programmes conceptualize or support social cohesion. Thus, this paper explores how three European sport programmes conceptualize and foster social cohesion. Findings are generated from a thematic analysis of interviews, group discussions, observations and documents. The themes developed show how organizations adopt an individual-centerd view of social cohesion, focusing mainly on social relations, tolerance and mutual help. In turn, this translates to an individual-focused practice of social cohesion, emphasizing personal skills, behaviors, and social relations, with the transfer of social cohesion to the broader community left mostly in participants’ hands. Due to a number of systemic barriers, programmes struggle to implement more holistic and structural approaches. As such, if we want to facilitate a move towards more structural or interventionist approaches, we as researchers must play an active role in questioning, challenging, and reshaping the systems that underpin sport-based social interventions.

Village-level social capital is an important factor to promote rural revitalization, but it is often ignored by existing researches. Based on the field investigation on 357 grape industry villages in Ningling County of Henan Province, decomposed village social capital into three dimensions (social network, social norm and social trust), this paper aims to discuss how village social capital influences rural industry development by promoting crop specialization. Results showed that the social network affects the transmission of grape planting information and technology. The richer the social network, the faster the diffusion of grape planting and the faster the realization of crop specialization. However, different types of social network play different roles. Social norms affect whether villages participate in grape production decisions. Proper risk awareness and efficient and reliable social organization services can help village farmers participate in grape planting and improve the level of crop specialization. Social trust affects the scale and duration of grape planting in a village; that is, the higher the level of social trusts, the higher the degree of crop specialization. In short, social capital can effectively promote the rapid cultivation of superior crops, enhance the specialization level of agricultural production and drive the coordinated development of upstream and downstream industries, thereby promoting the development of rural industries. This study emphasizes that, in the process of rural revitalization, developing countries should consider the social environments of different regions, fully mobilize the power of local social capital and develop reasonable and feasible technology popularization, adoption and implementation programs.

Measuring social capital has been a challenging task over the past few decades, and, still, many of its dimensions and manifestations have not been thoroughly or evidently explored. The possible causes may be the ever-changing evolutionary perspectives that take place within the various levels of analysis—micro, meso, and macro—or within the various settings, where some of its core dimensions—bonding, bridging, and linking—are developed, or even among the contexts where its core determinants and features—trust, norms, connections, ties, etc.—are observed. Having in mind the various streams of research and theoretical discourses on social capital formation, this paper aims to surface the identification of the possible evidence on the formation of social capital among social economy organizations, and particularly among social enterprises. In doing so, it aims to explore the relational and cognitive features that drive social enterprises in their interorganizational cooperation with other social enterprises and third-sector organizations. The findings suggest that the central components of social capital, such as the sharing of common values, trust, reciprocity, and trustworthiness, are among those features that were valued most among the participants in the survey during their cooperation and engagement in common activities with other organizations.

In the current study, we investigate the impacts of social capital (SC) and intellectual capital (IC) on audit fees among the companies listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). Since the criteria for the norms and the networks are extremely correlated, we used a principal component analysis (PCA) to construct an index of social capital for each province between 2011 and 2016. The Pulic model is also used as a proxy for measuring value added intellectual capital (VAIC). The ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is employed in this study to test our research hypotheses as well. According to the research literature, on the one hand, investors and lenders can be more confident in the financial reporting honesty of the firms headquartered in areas with high social capital; on the other hand, auditors judge the trustworthiness of their clients based on where the firm is headquartered. Inconsistent with the prior studies, our findings show that companies headquartered in provinces with high social capital pay higher audit fees. Given that Iranian firms are under heavy financial pressure due to economic sanctions, those companies located in areas with higher social capital likely have abused the high level of trust that auditors and other groups in the market have in them and participated in earnings manipulation to mask their weak financial performance. Among the various components of IC, we found strong evidence that employed capital efficiency (ECE) and audit costs correlated positively. In short, this paper sheds light on the fact that severe financial pressures on managers may sometimes lead them to take advantage of the dark side of social capital and intellectual capital when preparing financial reports.