Determining the Relative Significance of Life style Factors on Predicting Social Capital: A Study Using Multilayer Perceptron

Abstract

Economic development ushered in rapid urbanization across the globe. Urbanization brought in opportunities for improved income, better standard of living, and enhanced health care along with a sea change in life styles of populace. Life style of an individual is a factor that influences the social involvement of an individual. Lifestyle as well as social capital is important factors that may contribute healthy behavior of an individual in any society. Social capital is a notion that targets the significance of social interactions between groups and within the groups. Social capital is considered to involve social networks and support structures, community participation, civic and political involvement, trust in people and social institutions, and norms of reciprocity. This study is an attempt to explore the influence of life style factors in predicting the social capital of an individual. The study conducted among 434 educators in the State of Kerala, India, by using validated instruments. Lifestyle of the respondents was measured by using AIO (Activities, Interest and Opinions) inventory. The tool that used to measure ‘social capital’ is formed from the Social Capital Assessment Tool (SOCAT) developed by World Bank. This paper addresses the importance of lifestyle factors in predicting the social capital of an individual by using multilayer perceptron. End result suggested that there were three lifestyle factors namely self-confidence with normalized importance of 100%, communityminded with normalized importance of 95% and information seeking behavior with normalized importance of 62.2 % of an individual are significant in predicting the social capital. The findings of the study offer number of implications for policy makers. Future research and managerial implications is addressed in this study.