Environmental concern: a culture of trust

In this paper, we test the hypothesis that participation in cultural associations improves social capital, and more specifically generalized trust, which in turn fosters environmental concern. Using a dataset combining two large cross-national socioeconomic surveys and an instrumental variable mediation approach, we find that a measure of generalized trust fully mediates the relationship between people’s participation in cultural organizations and their environmental concerns. This result suggests that governments can increase citizens' environmental concern – a prerequisite for pro-environmental behaviors – by encouraging their participation in cultural associations.