Social capital and informal social networks in a changing natural and institutional environment

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Social capital and social networks have gained much attention in rural development research. Yet, social capital in the form of social networks is a largely missing dimension of income and poverty analysis. Moreover, most research on social capital assumes that it is a uniform source. The effects of different forms of social capital on household outcome are rarely investigated. The objective of this research project is therefore to broaden our understanding of social capital and networks in rural household economies of developing and transition countries. The discussion of differences and similarities in the households¿ endowment with social capital in the two country comparison (Vietnam/Thailand) will contribute to a more distinct knowledge of the role of social capital in rural development. The hypotheses of this research are: Different forms of social capital have 1st distinct effects on household welfare, are 2nd important in accessing scarce resources and have 3rd a prominent impact on poverty resilience. This research will collect socio-economic household data in combination with complete and ego-centered social network data. Principal Component Analysis will be used to derive different forms of social capital scores from the data, which will then be entered in multiple regression models and thus, measuring the impact of social capital on various household outcomes and its influence on access to resources.