The Environmental Kuznets Curve Under a New framework: Role of Social Capital in Water Pollution

trust (Putnam). Fukuyama in his book defines the social capital as “a capability that arises
from the prevalence of trust in a society or in a certain part of it.” He also says that “trust
is the expectation that arises with in a community of regular, honest, and cooperative
behavior, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of other members of that
community”.

Different studies including Diego Gambetta , James Coleman, Robert Putnam,
and Francis Fukuyama have shown that performance of a society’s institutions is linked
to the level of trust and social capital. These studies argue that trust or social capital
create cooperation between people to produce more efficiently and to prevent inefficient
matter (like crime) in society (La Porta et al.). Woolcock defines social capital as “a
broad term encompassing the norms and networks facilitating collective action for mutual
benefit. Ceteris paribus, one would expect communities blessed with high stocks of social
capital to be faster, cleaner, wealthier, more literate, better governed, and generally
happier than those with low stocks, because their members are able to find and keep good
jobs, initiate projects serving public interests, costlessly monitor one another’s behavior,
enforce contractual agreements, use existing resources more efficiently, resolve disputes
more amicably, and respond to citizens’ concerns more promptly.”

According to Bremh et al. “social capital is an aggregate concept that has its basis
in individual behavior, attitudes, and predisposition. Recently, scholars in sociology,
economics, and political science have converged on the concept of social capital as a
comprehensive explanation for why some communities are able to resolve collective
problems cooperatively while others are unable to bring people together for common
purposes. Scholarly interest in the development of social capital is motivated primarily by

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