Financialization, religion, and social trust in rural China

This paper examines the impact of financial development and religion on social trust in rural China. We use multinomial logistic regression models with the Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP) Survey Data of 2013. The findings show that while financial development has a negative and significant impact on particular trust but no impact on general trust, religion has a positive relationship with general trust but insignificant relationship with particular trust. This study further investigates the impact of interaction between financial development and religion on social trust. The joint effect of financial development and religion has significant and positive relationship with particular trust. This implies that while financialization destroys the traditional relatives and friends trust based on lending and borrowing in rural area, religiosity lessens the negative impact of financialization on particular trust.