Is Social Capital Green? Cultural Features and Environmental Performance in the European Union

Abstract

This paper analyses the r elationship between social capita l and environmental performance in the European Union. In a first stage, environmental performance is measured by an index of eco - efficiency at the country level , computed using Data Envelopment Ana lysis (DEA) techniques and data for the year 2013 . In a second stage, the influence of s ocial capital and other relevant control variables on eco - efficiency is assessed by means of truncated regressions and bootstrapping, as proposed by Simar and Wilson (2007 ) . For several model specifications, tests fail to reject the hypothesis of no effect of social capital on environ- mental performance, and the main driver of environmental performance is found to be the le vel of eco- nomic development, measured by GDP p er capita. Furthermore , this result is robust to different defini- tions of social capital and sample periods .