Cross-level interaction between individual and neighbourhood socioeconomic status in relation to social trust in a Japanese community

This study explores whether cross-level interaction between individual and neighbourhood socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with social trust. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with 4123 randomly selected people aged 20 years and older from 72 districts in the city of Kashiwa in 2009, and 1720 questionnaires were analysed. People of low SES tended to have higher trust in the national government and lower trust in neighbours as residential district SES increased. By contrast, people of high SES had relatively constant levels of both general and local aspects of social trust, despite local district SES. We found that perceptions of trust among people of low SES are more likely to be influenced by district-level SES than among people of high SES. This highlights the importance of considering the cross-level interaction of individual and neighbourhood SES as this interaction can either raise or lower social trust in communities.