Perceived marketization in Poland: Translating key concepts of institutional anomie theory to the micro level

Abstract

Institutional anomie theory (IAT) describes the potentially criminogenic impact of economically dominated social institutions. Although originally cast at the macro level of society, more efforts have emerged lately to capture the IAT framework on the individual level, resulting in a need for appropriate measures representing the presumed marketization processes. Our study addresses this need by offering a theoretically derived, comprehensive measure of the individual-level instantiation of an anomic culture depicted in IAT, that is, ‘marketized mentality’. Structural equation models testing for the single higher-order factor marketized mentality are calculated with a representative random sample of Poland’s population. Finally, the implications and limitations resulting from the analyses are discussed.