Grabbed trust? The impact of large-scale land acquisitions on social trust in Africa

The livelihoods of rural populations in Africa are closely tied to small-scale farming. In recent years, private investors as well as governments have shown a growing interest in large-scale acquisition of arable land across the continent. While researchers have started to analyze the local economic and envi-ronmental impacts of such investments, their socio-political as well as psychological consequences remain poorly understood. This paper investigates how changes in land ownership patterns caused by large-scale land acquisitions affect the level of interpersonal trust among rural communities. We main-tain that the transition from community and individual-smallholder land ownership into large-scale investor property has a negative impact on local levels of trust. Furthermore, we assume that the dete-rioration of trust caused by large-scale land investments is stronger among women than men. To test our claims, we connect circa 71,000 respondents from Afrobarometer surveys to georeferenced informa-tion on the location of land deals from 33 African countries. Relying on a difference-in-differences type of empirical strategy as well as an instrumental variable approach, we show that large-scale land invest-ments indeed disrupt local social fabrics by reducing interpersonal trust. Our results suggest that trust in relatives is particularly affected by large-scale land acquisitions. In addition, we find that land deals reduce personalized trust among women but not necessarily among men.(c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.