Open AccessTrust and victimization: A cross-national comparison of Finland, the U.S., Germany and UK
Author(s) -
Matti Näsi,
Pekka Räsänen,
Teo Keipi,
Atte Oksanen
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
research on finnish society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2490-0958
pISSN - 1796-8739
DOI - 10.51815/fjsr.110771
Subject(s) - residence , online and offline , psychology , social trust , association (psychology) , computer assisted web interviewing , ordinary least squares , social psychology , demography , geography , political science , social capital , sociology , business , marketing , machine learning , computer science , law , psychotherapist
This study examines the relationship between average means of generalized trust on two groups of social connections, namely people in general and people only met online, and respondents’ past experiences with online and offline victimization. Our data was collected from four countries, Finland, the U.S., Germany and UK from participants aged 15–30 years. Each country was analyzed separately using OLS regression models. Our findings indicated that offline victimization had a negative association with perceived trust in people in general in all four countries. Online victimization was negatively associated with trust in people in general only in Finland and Germany. Trust towards people only met online was not as clearly associated with online and offline victimization, but in the U.S. and UK online victims reported higher trust. Gender, age, social activity, residence area and age also indicated country level differences in terms of their association with trust.