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Neighbourhood Social Capital and Neighbourhood Safety in Predicting the Subjective Well-being of Young Malaysians

Chong, S. T., Koh, D., Fauziah, I. and Samsudin, A. R.

Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science, Volume 25, Issue S, June 2017

Keywords: Neighbourhood safety, social capital, subjective well-being, young people

Published on: 07 Jun 2017

A safe neighbourhood provides a trusting platform for people to interact with one another, and in turn, promotes higher levels of social capital among neighbours. Young people who grow up in a safe neighbourhood may learn to form trusting relationships with their neighbours. This experience might enhance their subjective well-being by reconciliation and regeneration of their own worldviews with that of others. On the other hand, these trusting relationships with neighbours could increase the perceived safety of the neighbourhood because the sense of security is based on the amount of help they could get, especially in emergency circumstances. Thus, in this paper, we aim to explore the role of Perceived Neighbourhood Safety as a mediator to Neighbourhood Social Capital (NSC) and Subjective Well-Being. We surveyed 5,237 youths ranging in age from 15 to 25 years. Respondents were recruited using stratified and clustering sampling. Results from the Pearson correlation show a significant relationship between NSC and the Subjective Well-Being of youth; youth who trust and reciprocate towards their neighbourhoods perceive life as happier. This study also found that Perceived Neighbourhood Safety is a partial mediator for NSC and Subjective Well-Being in youth. These findings show that the importance of the neighbourhood bond goes beyond crime prevention to include well-being of youth in a community. Therefore, there is a need to promote activities that could strengthen the elements of trust and reciprocity among neighbours. Future research could look into how different activities could enhance the subjective well-being of neighbours from different age groups.

ISSN 1511-3701

e-ISSN 2231-8542

Article ID

JSSH-S0301-2016

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