The post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina: Social capital and pro-social behaviour

Abstract

This paper investigates how social capital contributes to the pro-social behaviour of individuals in a post-conflict environment. I simultaneously investigate the pro-social behaviours in the periods of crisis (floods) and normality and observe whether (structural and relational) social capital has important influences in these two different times. The main novelty of this approach is that I model individuals' pro-social behaviours jointly for both the periods in focus and treat them as systematic outcomes of observed and unobserved (endogenous) influences. I find that more pro-social activities in the normal times are positively associated with such activities in the crisis period. Additionally, the results reveal the importance of (structural) social capital on pro-social behaviour – namely, group membership, size and ethnic structure of individual networks matter. Of particular interest for this post-conflict society and related literature is that greater ethnic diversity of individual networks is supportive for pro-social engagement of citizens. Finally, among the observed economic influences, I find that the respondents working in the informal economy report more pro-social activities while formal employment works more as financial intermediary for these engagements.

The role of higher education and civic involvement in converting young adults' social responsibility to prosocial behavior

“…Although our empirical results reveal some promising insights, this issue deserves a separate study. In SEE, regional studies of social capital, trust, and prosocial behavior show a generally low level of trust in public institutions, with a focus on friends, family, and other selected individuals, instead of developing more inclusive social initiatives, public policies, and responses to crises 27,[81][82][83][84] . In the post-socialist and other peripheral regions, there are embedded social elites' beliefs that the other parts of the society cannot be trusted, leading to high levels of informal behaviors 85 , including governance practices.…”