| Prior research suggests that neighborhood context has an important role in shaping individuals' perceptions of generalized trust, which is an important ingredient in establishing informal social control. Since most of the empirical research focuses on the direct effects of neighborhood structural conditions, there is a rather limited understanding of how social processes affect individual levels of trust. As a result, it remains unclear whether several theoretically relevant social processes mediate the effects of neighborhood compositional features. The current study uses data from the Project of Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods--Community Survey (PHDCN-CS) to investigate whether social mechanisms, specifically fear and police efficacy, mediate the relationship between several adverse neighborhood conditions on individual-level generalized trust. The findings show that both fear and police efficacy are salient mechanisms in the neighborhood context and trust relationship. The theoretical and policy implications of the results are discussed, along with implications and directions for future research in this area. |
