Informal social connectedness is mutually associated with generalized trust: longitudinal evidence from Australia

This study examined the bidirectional within-person relationships between two dimensions of community engagement (informal social connectedness and civic-political engagement) and generalized trust. The study used data from the longitudinal Household, Income, and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey, collected in five waves four years apart from 2006 to 2022 (N = 24,533). Results from the random intercept cross-lagged panel model revealed a significant temporal relationship between informal social connectedness and generalized trust at the within-person level. Specifically, changes in informal social connectedness were found to predict future changes in trust and vice versa. Conversely, changes in civic-political engagement were not related to future changes in either informal connectedness or trust. These results show that informal social ties and generalized trust have a reciprocal relationship, with increases in one predicting future increases in the other, and decreases in one predicting future decreases in the other.