THE WEAKNESS OF WEAK TIES: DO SOCIAL CAPITAL INVESTMENTS AMONG LEADERS PAY OFF DURING TIMES OF DISASTER?
We use a longitudinal, pre-post disaster dataset of dyadic ties among leaders to examine key questions related to investments in social capital before a disaster, the expected payoffs from these investments, the actual payoffs of these investments, and the marginal effects of such investments. Our findings indicate that pre-disaster relationship building has a non-linear relationship to expected payoffs and actual payoffs. Marginal effects analysis suggests three interesting relationships between the investment and expected and actual payoffs in social capital. First, pre-disaster relationship building led to disproportionately higher expectations for those investments, rather than a linear relationship. Second, pre-disaster relationship building was limited in its impact on communication frequency during the disaster. Third, investments in pre-disaster relationship building had a surprisingly negative effect on realized social capital during the disaster.
