Do online social interactions cultivate social capital? Evidence from a longitudinal study.

ABSTRACT: It is widely documented that social capital can benefit individual and social development. However, research on the roles of internet technologies in cultivating social capital has not arrived at a consensus. This article aims to understand the effects of online social interactions (OSIs) on generalized trust and prosocial civic engagement, two essential forms of social capital, with a longitudinal study and structural equation model. Fixed-effect model estimations consistently show that OSIs can effectively increase levels of generalized trust in China. Also, trust in parents is used as an alternative dependent variable to provide a comparative analysis. The mechanisms of these two sources of trust are different, and insignificant effects of OSIs on trust in parents are found to implicitl

SUBMITTER: Zhou D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9614328 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature