Neighborhoods, Mistrust, and Social Ties

Joongbaeck Kim, University of Texas at Austin

Social relationships are complex and ongoing processes among social constituents; therefore, their development and processes are influenced by social and structural features of neighborhood contexts in which individuals are embedded. Social disorganization perspective assumed that structural barriers of neighborhood contexts impede the development of the social ties that promote the ability to solve common problems. Few studies paid attention to intervening mechanism of neighborhood structural disadvantage and neighborhood social ties. Previous study of mistrust and neighborhood disorder found that neighborhood disorder mediated the association between neighborhood disadvantage and mistrust, and powerlessness amplified the impact of neighborhood disorder on mistrust. Drawing upon theories above, I examine that neighborhood disorder influences neighborhood social ties directly and indirectly by increasing residents’ mistrust. Because cross-sectional data cannot postulate the causal relationships among variables, I also test whether change in mistrust and neighborhood disorder account neighborhood social ties using longitudinal data.