Suchergebnisse

The globalization process has brought questions regarding the detriments and benefits of a shrinking world to the forefront of academic research. The closer integration and intensification of worldwide social relations has become a social fact of our globalized era. Within this compression of social relations, technological advancements, and increase in travel, CouchSurfing (the largest and most general hospitality exchange network) materialized. While much excitement, speculation, and even fear has emerged in the popular press regarding hospitality exchange networks, there has been a dearth of academic and systematic exploration of the motivations, effects, meanings, and processes behind this growing phenomenon. This dataset will elucidate and provide a greater understanding of this alternative mode of travel in the following distinct, yet interrelated areas: emergence and sustained commitment of this transnational network; development of meaningful intercultural engagement; elements of risk and trust; insight into the interplay between the transnational network and local cultures; resistance to globalization; and finally the development and maintenance of international understanding and global civil society.

Literature shows that religiosity can provide individual resilience to life shocks as well as regional resilience to disasters caused by natural hazards. Related work has examined the complicated links between religion and economic growth. Yet few, if any, studies examine the role of regional levels of religiosity on a region's resilience to recession—or how quickly the employment rate returns to pre‐recession levels (a common measure of resilience in the economics literature). As the recovery period of the Great Recession cools and economists warn of future economic downturns, all known variables that may be linked with regional resilience are worthy of exploration. Using survey results from the Gosling‐Potter Internet Project and General Social Surveys, we applied logarithmic functions to pre‐ and post‐Great Recession employment data for 2,836 U.S. counties. We found a modest and statistically significant association between religious belief and regional resilience to recession. Religiosity was the strongest of sixteen psychosocial variables that we examined in association with the speed of job recovery; despite having negative links with other economic variables. This has particular salience for more rural economies; policy implications are discussed.