Capturing Bonding, Bridging, and Linking Social Capital through Publicly Available Data

Abstract

A growing body of research has illuminated the powerful role played by social capital in influencing disaster and resilience outcomes. Popular vulnerability mapping frameworks, while well suited for capturing demographic characteristics such as age, race, and wealth, do not include sufficient proxies for social capital. This article proposes a concrete way to measure bonding, bridging, and linking social capital using widely available information. Our social capital index (SoCI) uses 19 indicators from publicly available U.S. census and Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) data for all counties across the contiguous United States. We demonstrate broad variations in the SoCI Index by mapping counties across the continental North America. Validity tests indicate outcomes similar or superior to other approaches such as the Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC) and the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI). Our new mapping framework provides a more focused way for disaster managers, scholars, and local residents to understand how communities could cope with future disasters based on levels of social ties and cohesion.

Social Ties, Mobility, and COVID-19 spread in Japan

“…This analysis employs several key predictors. To model social capital and social vulnerability, we use new indices modeled after the indices by Kyne & Aldrich (2019) & Cutter et al (2003, aggregated to the prefectural level. As an initial analysis, we model just social capital, while subsequent analyses replace the social capital index with subindices for bonding, bridging, and linking social capital.…”

Assessing the Relationship between Social Vulnerability, Social Capital, and Housing Resilience

“…The full list of variables used in the SoCI as well as maps of the distribution of bonding, bridging, and linking social capital are included in Appendix A. We generally follow the SoCI methodology outlined in Kyne and Aldrich [6] to develop the social capital index presented in this paper. Kyne and Aldrich use 19 indicators developed from publicly available data to operationalize social capital for counties in the contiguous United States.…”

“…Therefore, for the recovery analysis, we used the census tract scale SVI and SVI themes in the regression. Kyne and Aldrich's SoCI methodology [6] is only specified at the county scale. Additionally, census tract boundaries are drawn to group the U.S. population into relatively homogenous groups, which may affect the validity of applying the SoCI methodology at this scale, as many of the indicators are essentially measures of homogeneity.…”

“…Unlike social vulnerability, there has not been much work to develop appropriate indicator variables and combine them into a tool for resilience assessment. However, a recent study [6] develops a social capital index (SoCI) intended for resilience assessment and disaster risk management, which uses publicly available data to calculate measures of social capital in U.S. counties.…”

“…These indicators can be easily calculated using publicly available data from the U.S. Census Bureau, allowing for a consistent approach to measuring social capital across U.S. counties. Building on this work, Kyne and Aldrich [6] developed an index of social capital (SoCI) to assess community disaster resilience. This index was validated using data from historical disaster impacts in the United States and results showed that higher levels of social capital were associated with fewer fatalities, but greater levels of damage.…”