The Dark Side of Social Capital: When Community Ties Exclude and Silence

This study examines the dark side of social capital by analyzing how community ties may generate social exclusion and suppress critical community participation through normative pressure. It proposes and empirically tests a “dark pathway” model integrating bonding and bridging social capital, social exclusion, normative pressure, and critical participation within a unified framework. Data were collected through a cross-sectional survey of 450 adult community members across urban (n = 230) and rural (n = 220) contexts. Structural Equation Modeling was employed, with mediation effects estimated using bootstrapping (5,000 resamples). Both the measurement and structural models demonstrated good to excellent fit (CFI > 0.95; TLI > 0.95; RMSEA < 0.05). The results indicate that social exclusion has a strong and statistically significant negative effect on critical participation (β < 0; p < .01). In contrast, bonding and bridging social capital do not exhibit significant direct effects, suggesting that their influence operates through indirect or mediated pathways. Normative pressure functions as a significant mediating mechanism, as indicated by a 95% bootstrap confidence interval that does not include zero. Multi-group analysis further reveals that this indirect pathway is substantially stronger in rural than in urban contexts. These findings challenge the conventional assumption that social capital is inherently beneficial, highlighting instead its context-dependent and potentially exclusionary consequences. The study underscores the importance of relational dynamics, normative constraints, and social context in shaping participatory outcomes.