Correlates of Trust and Engagement in Environmental Activism

Abstract

Trust is such a nebulous and elusive concept that has fascinated social scientists for decades. It is a truism that no human society can exist and develop without a good foundation of trust. Trust deals with citizens’ beliefs and expectations and encapsulates notions of integrity, credibility and dependability of an individual or institution. The relationship between trust and pertinent development issues such as environmental activism, pro-environmental behavior and climate change have not been widely investigated. Even when they are investigated, the focus is on developed countries, especially the United States. In the available literature, there is virtually no research that is focused on the correlates of trust and engagement in environmental activism, especially in the context of African countries. In that regard, this article fills the lacunae using nationally-representative data focusing on the following main research questions: to what extent do trust measures (intimate trust, distant trust, trust vs being careful, take advantage of vs be fair), together with institutional confidence, democratic satisfaction, democratic aspiration, globalization, social network embeddedness, socio-demographics, country of residence, etc. determine engagement in environmental activism and are there some commonalities in relation to the predictors of generalized trust and environmental activism? Data for the paper is based on Wave 6 of the World Values Survey, focusing on the following nine African countries: South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Libya, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. Based on the binary logistic regression models, generalized trust, distant trust (outside familiar circles) institutional confidence, media use, age and country of residence (Ghana, Zimbabwe and Rwanda) are significantly and positively associated with participation in a demonstration for an environmental cause, whereas democratic satisfaction, globalization, gender equality, being male, residing in South Africa and Nigeria are negatively and significantly associated with participation in a demonstration for an environmental cause. Institutional confidence and distant trust are the main consistently common predictors of both environmental activism and generalized trust.

Keywords: trust, environmental activism, democratic deficit, institutional confidence, subjective wellbeing, social network, globalization, Africa