사회자본으로서의 신뢰가 친환경행태에 미치는 영향

It is known that trust—an essential important of social capital--can play an important role in solving community and public problems. This paper empirically evaluates the effects of different types of trust on pro-environmental behavior. It classifies two private-sphere trust, including general trust and particularized trust, and three public-sphere trust, including trust in public policy, trust in government institutions, and trust in civil organizations. The empirical findings suggest that public-sphere trust has greater impacts on pro-environmental behavior than private-sphere trust. To explain, higher levels of trust in policy and civic organizations can increase the likelihood of pro-environmental behavior. The results imply that the promotion of pro-environmental behavior would require systematic governments’ efforts of improving public-sphere trust, not to mention implementing effective environmental policies and programs.