Social Capital And Satisfaction To Government

Disasters provide unique contexts to compare the normal and abnormal socialsystem. Based on the data collected in the earthquake area of Sichuan in2009and2012,this paper includes two parts.With the multivariable linear regression model, the first part compares theinfluence of community and individual social capital (CSC and ISC for short) onvillagers’ satisfaction to local and high-level governments in the period right after theearthquake (2009) and in the last phase of the reconstruction period (2012). The resultsshow1) in the two periods, relative CSC showed no impact on the satisfaction to anylevel of governments but cognitive CSC impacted the satisfaction to any level ofgovernments, however the influence was indirect and the effect was through twomediators which were the evaluation about whether the governments were fair and lifesatisfaction in2009.2) In2012, ISC increased its influence on the satisfaction to localgovernments while embedding degree in relative network showed influence on thesatisfaction to any level of governments.3) No factors showed significant impact on thesatisfaction to high-level governments in2009, due to the overall high level satisfaction.The high satisfaction decreased in2012, and CSC turned to be important factors.With HLM, the second part is about the influence of CSC on villagers’ satisfactionto governments (direct effect) and whether CSC moderated the effect of ISC onsatisfaction to governments (moderating effect). The results show1) direct effect wassimilar and activity level of village committee showed no impact while CSC impactedthe satisfaction to any level of governments.2) moderating effect was distinctive andcontrary to the hypotheses and activity level of village committee positively moderatedthe effect of “number of persons who pay a new year call to the subject” on thesatisfaction to local governments and CSC positively moderated the effect of “numberof relatives who are officials” on the satisfaction to high-level governments.In sum, this paper finds with the reconstruction processing, ISC became importantfor villagers to be satisfied about governments and the effect was moderated by CSC.