Ubiquitous local community experiences: The impact of People-Nearby Applications on users’ social capital,local involvement,and sense of community

Abstract

People-Nearby Applications (PNAs) can impact users’ local social capital and sense of community (SoC), by allowing users to meet new people locally and enhance their SoC through increased local social capital and active involvement in the community of belonging. An online questionnaire was administered to 595 Italian and Dutch PNAs users to detect their PNAs community-related use, frequency of face-to-face encounters with other users, local social capital, active involvement, and SoC. A multiple mediation model was run using structural equation modeling. PNAs use associates to face-to-face encounters among local community members and community social capital, but not to community involvement. Through social capital, PNAs use indirectly enhances SoC. These results show that PNAs community-related use may enhance local community experiences through prompting face-to-face encounters among community fellows and making users feel more embedded into local social networks. This confirms PNAs community-related use potential to improve users’ neighborhood social and community experiences.