The Impact of Social Capital on Rural Residents’ Medical Service Utilization in China—An Empirical Study Based on CFPS Data

Based on CFPS data, the article analyzes the impact of social capital on the utilization of medical services by rural residents in China using binary logit and multinomial logit models. The social capital includes two dimensions: cognitive social capital and structural social capital, and the indicators of medical service utilization are “whether to seek medical treatment when sick” and “choice of medical institution”. This paper concludes that: (1) among the cognitive social capital, special trust and religious beliefs have a significant positive influence on whether rural residents choose to seek medical treatment when they are sick; (2) among the structural social capital, social participation has a significant positive influence on choice of medical institution, and social network has a significant positive influence on the choice of township health center, specialty hospital, and general hospital. According to the empirical results, this paper proposes the following suggestions. The trust mechanism of rural society should be reconstructed, the positive role of religious beliefs should be given full play, the healthy development of social networks should be promoted, and the rural social organizations should be fostered and developed.