Can social organizations enhance community trust? An Empirical Study Based on a Historic Community in Beijing, China

Keywords: trust, structural equation modeling, historic community, social organization
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 4/10/2021 09:35 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/10/2021 10:50 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 17

Abstract

Historic communities in cities are among the most complex areas in terms of social, economic and cultural issues. Under China's unique community governance system, community trust plays an increasingly important role in the process of improving community governance, which requires the joint attention of multiple parties including local governments, local residents and social organizations, yet existing research rarely discusses what role third-party social organizations play in the construction of trust. In this paper, I first apply the statistical method of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and validation factor analysis (VFA) to study the influence of local government and social organizations on community trust in a historical community in Beijing (Shijia Community), and construct an influence factor system model for trust construction in Shijia Community. I then applied the structural equation modeling (SEM) to quantify the influence of social organizations on community trust construction through the basic data obtained from the local residents' questionnaire survey and the in-depth interview data from the actual research. In this article, I found that (1) both social organizations and grassroots government have a positive effect on the construction of trust in Shijia community, and the effect of social organizations is relatively larger (2) the quality of personnel in social organizations has the most significant effect. Finally, according to the priority of the influencing factors, I propose adaptive measures and suggestions to increase the trust of Shijia community residents.