This study explores whether cross-level interaction between individual and neighbourhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with social trust. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with 4123 randomly selected people aged 20 years and older from 72 districts in the city of Kashiwa in 2009, and 1720 questionnaires were analysed. People of low SES tended to have higher trust in the national government and lower trust in neighbours as residential district SES increased. By contrast, people of high SES had relatively constant levels of both general and local aspects of social trust, despite local district SES. We found that perceptions of trust among people of low SES are more likely to be influenced by district-level SES than among people of high SES. This highlights the importance of considering the cross-level interaction of individual and neighbourhood SES as this interaction can either raise or lower social trust in communities.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.