Wood, L; Martin, K; Christian, H; Houghton, S; Kawachi, I; Vallesi, S; McCune, S; (2017) Social capital and pet ownership – A tale of four cities. SSM - Population Health , 3 pp. 442-447. 10.1016/j.ssmph.2017.05.002.

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Abstract

1. Introduction The erosion of sense of community and social capital in modern societies is a common lament. With accumulating evidence about how social and psychosocial supports are related to overall health and wellbeing, pet ownership is emerging as a valuable and positive feature in community and neighborhood life. Social capital has gained considerable traction over the last two decades in public policy discourse, and has been imputed to have benefits for a range of settings and contexts including neighborhoods, workplaces, families and virtual communities. The development and maintenance of social capital are increasingly incorporated in claims that support a wide range of policies and community initiatives: some relating to urban design, urban renewal, and others to community building. There are various definitions of social capital, often themed around people receiving some common benefit from interacting with each other, and some notion of collective societal benefit derived from these interactions. Putnam’s (2001) definition of social capital is one of the most widely used, defining it as the “connections among individuals, social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them” (p. 19). Most simply, social capital has been described as the “glue” that holds society together (Lang & Hornburg, 1998) or the raw material of civil society that is created from everyday interactions between people (Onyx & Bullen, 1997). Social capital can stem from many sources; for example it is being created and applied when people (individually or as groups and organisations) lend a helping hand, get involved in community issues, interact with local residents, volunteer, share useful contacts and skills, or work towards a common goal (Halpern, 2005). Whilst the social interactions associated with pets have been explored through different research methodologies and disciplinary lenses, the relationship between pet ownership and social capital has been far less considered. Despite wide citation and media interest in our earlier study about pets and social capital published (Wood, Giles-Corti, & Bulsara, 2005), the research remains one of the few empirical studies of its kind. In the 2005 study, completed via a community survey of 339 residents in Perth, we found that pet owners scored significantly higher compared with non-pet owners on an overall social capital scale whilst controlling for demographics. Moreover, the results indicated that social capital was higher among all pet owners, and was limited to those who owned dogs (often argued to be the pet type most likely to precipitate community engagement) (Wood et al., 2005). The notion that pets can facilitate social capital goes beyond the more commonly investigated role of pets as a social icebreaker between strangers, or as a catalyst for social interaction (Hunt, Hart, & Gomulkiewicz, 1992; McNicholas & Collis, 2000; Messent, 1983; Newby, 1997; Robins, Sanders, & Cahill, 1991; Wood, 2010). When viewed through a social capital lens for example, we are interested in whether the social interactions facilitated by pets have a wider ripple effect on social trust or the ‘ties that bind’ communities together as a civil society (Wood, 2010). Moreover, one of the hallmarks of social capital is that it can be generated and shared among people who may not be known to each other. The example of a widow living alone who benefits from the collective goodwill of neighbours in looking out for each other is one illustration of this (Kawachi, Kennedy, Lochner, & Prothrowstith, 1997). This study set out firstly to test whether the previously observed relationship between pet ownership and social capital in our original Perth study (Wood et al., 2005) still holds true over a decade later, and in an American as well as Australian context. Secondly, this research examines the extent to which dog ownership or dog walking explains the potential nexus between pets and social capital.

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