Social institutions: A novel approach to measuring social capital in communities

Objective: Social capital plays an important role in post-disaster recovery outcomes. The multidimensionality of social capital results in a complexity of measurement.  Social institutions provide a unique opportunity to quantify social capital as they allow community members to interact with each other to build trust and act collectively. Census tract level business pattern data were used to construct a measure of community social institutions called the Social Institutions Index (SII) for Louisiana and Mississippi based on 2013 data.

Methods: Using a factor analytic approach, 68 social institution types were reduced into 24 distinct factors accounting for 51 percent of the variable. Eigenvalues and the scree plot were evaluated and data were reduced and rotated using varimax rotation to seven factors accounting for 23.78 percent of the variance. Factors were placed in an additive model to compute scores for quantity and diversity of social institutions at the census block group level. Spearman’s rho correlations were computed to examine quantity and diversity of social institutions and demographic characteristics.

Results: We found that greater social institutional diversity was found in communities with greater populations that have been found to be at risk for increased adverse impacts following disasters including females (ρ0.118, p<0.000), households with children (ρ0.064, p<0.000), and households living below the poverty line (ρ0.129, p<0.000).

Conclusion: Diversity of social institutions may be an important indicator of social capital in communities and may provide an opportunity for building community resilience.