Social capital in the Italian regions at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic: a comparison of different composite indicators

Empirical evidence demonstrates social capital to have important implications for many different social phenomena, but identifying the best way to measure it continues to represent an important challenge for researchers. This paper aims to compare the levels of social capital across the twenty Italian regions at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic using three composite indicators, namely: the additive system, the Mazziotta Pareto index method, and the Pena distance method. Social capital is conceptualized according to the communitarian perspective. The data were collected in the year 2021. The results show that although the levels of social capital are distinct in northern vs southern Italian regions, the northern regions are actually not as homogeneous as in the past. Lombardy and Piedmont ranked much lower than some of the other adjacent northern regions. Furthermore, the Mazziotta Pareto index method is more robust than the additive and Pena distance methods.