Plastic Structures or Solid Houses of Cards? Estimating the Causal Effect(s) of Associational Membership on Individual Attitudes

The main goal of the thesis is to examine the existence of a link between the membership in different types of voluntary associations and various sets of attitudes and behaviors in at least four countries. To what extent becoming a member of a voluntary association is capable of influencing the way an individual thinks and behaves? Are the differences existing between members and non-members of certain organizations related to a pure selection effect, pre-dating hence the actual membership, or can they be traced back to a causal effect of the social dynamics the members are exposed to? One of the main issues of existing research is that the methodological approaches employed to estimate the effect(s) of associational membership are in general not enough to be able to distinguish between selection and causal effects. Since the membership in such organizations is usually the consequence of an individual choice, many relationships depicted as causal ones may be at least in part explained by a selection effect. Using a panel data approach, almost nonexistent in previous research, it is possible to have a much higher leverage to distinguish between causal and selection effects and the thesis aims at re-examining most of the results known in the domain of associational membership. In the second empirical part of the thesis, the objective is to develop an experimental setting allowing testing the importance of specific causal mechanisms.