Social capital and spread of COVID-19 in Poland – do membership, trust, norms and values or shared narratives matter?

Abstract

The experience of the SARS-CoV-19 pandemic can be a source of valuable information for public health authorities. As we have seen, the incidence is not evenly distributed in space, and the factors influencing it are not fully understood. Aspects of biological, demographic, economic, environmental, and political nature are considered, but it is believed that the social factor may be of critical importance. The density and intensity of social relations, general trust and trust in the authorities, norms and values – i.e., social capital – may have a key impact on the scale of infections. The research conducted so far on this subject does not provide clear conclusions, and the post-communist society, inferior in social capital, has hardly been analyzed. Using data for 73 subregions of Poland and performing regression analysis, we investigate how social capital explains the level of infection rate in the first three waves of the epidemic. The analysis results have shown that the factor of “political leaning” was strongly and negatively related to the infection rate in Poland. The research results indicate that, contrary to the previous studies, structural capital has the same positive effect on reducing the epidemic. However, relational social capital promotes more significant morbidity.