This article presents a new argument that links generalized social trust and collective action in situations with a large number of actors, who do not have specific information on each other. Generalized social trust enhances large-N cooperation through the social exchange heuristic, which...

Within the social capital literature it is often assumed that membership of voluntary associations causes generalized social trust and not the other way around. This study challenges this assumption by investigating if generalized social trust causes membership in a novel design that yields...