Ethnic Diversity and Social Trust: Evidence from the Micro-Context

We argue that residential exposure to ethnic diversity reduces social trust. Previous withincountry analyses of the relationship between contextual ethnic diversity and trust have been conducted at higher levels of aggregation, thus ignoring substantial variation in actual exposure to ethnic diversi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American sociological review 2015-06, Vol.80 (3), p.550-573
Main Authors: Dinesen, Peter Thisted, Sønderskov, Kim Mannemar
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aggregation
Comparative analysis
Context
Control variables
Cultural diversity
Cultural Pluralism
Denmark
Ethnic Diversity
Ethnic groups
Ethnicity
Evidence
Microanalysis
Multiculturalism & pluralism
Neighborhoods
Political attitudes
Quantitative psychology
Residence
Social capital
Social impact
Social interaction
Social psychology
Survey data
Surveys
Trust
Trust (Psychology)
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Summary:We argue that residential exposure to ethnic diversity reduces social trust. Previous withincountry analyses of the relationship between contextual ethnic diversity and trust have been conducted at higher levels of aggregation, thus ignoring substantial variation in actual exposure to ethnic diversity. In contrast, we analyze how ethnic diversity of the immediate microcontext—where interethnic exposure is inevitable—affects trust. We do this using Danish survey data linked with register-based data, which enables us to obtain precise measures of the ethnic diversity of each individual's residential surroundings. We focus on contextual diversity within a radius of 80 meters of a given individual, but we also compare the effect in the micro-context to the impact of diversity in more aggregate contexts. Our results show that ethnic diversity in the micro-context affects trust negatively, whereas the effect vanishes in larger contextual units. This supports the conjecture that interethnic exposure underlies the negative relationship between ethnic diversity in residential contexts and social trust.
ISSN:0003-1224
1939-8271
DOI:10.1177/0003122415577989