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How Civic is the Civic Culture? Explaining Community Participation Using the 2005 English Citizenship Survey

Governments increasingly seek to involve citizens in public policy and management, often appealing to their civic virtue. But why do people participate in civic and community-based actions? Drawing on theories of interpersonal behaviour, the article sets out four categories of citizen orientation that might influence participation: trust in government institutions, moral motivations, neighbourhood social norms and neighbourhood affect. Using the core sample component of the Home Office Citizenship Survey 2005, the analysis applies structural equation models (SEMs) to identify and explain four types of citizen act: influencing institutions individually, collective civic, citizen governance and community voluntarism. The results show that neighbourhood affect – having positive feelings about the neighbourhood – has a positive effect on civic behaviour. Citizens with low levels of political trust are more likely than others to engage in civic behaviour. Taking into account a range of socio-economic and other factors, there is no significant effect of neighbourhood social norms and moral motivations on civic behaviour.