Residents of rural areas dared to challenge each other more often about undesirable behavior in 2019 than residents of cities, according to new figures from Statistics Netherlands on Monday (CBS).
Slightly more than half (53 percent) of the inhabitants of less urbanized or non-urban areas dare to speak to people in the neighborhood about undesirable behavior. This percentage is lower in urban areas: 44 percent of the respondents in highly urbanized areas dare to and 40 percent of the respondents in highly urbanized areas.
CBS spokesman Dick ter Steege sees a correlation between addressing behavior and social cohesion, he says de Volkskrant. “The stronger the cohesion in a neighborhood, the easier people address each other. In a village, people often have the idea that they know each other, even if only via via. Then they also dare to correct each other.”
The CBS survey also shows that the more urban a residential environment is, the fewer people think that people are interacting in a pleasant way in a neighborhood. Rural residents find their neighborhood more pleasant and also say they have more contact with each other than residents of urban areas.
The figures released by Statistics Netherlands are part of the Safety Monitor of the research agency. For the study, 135,000 Dutch people aged fifteen and older were asked on the basis of a number of statements about the social cohesion in their own neighborhood.
Research not yet applicable to corona measures
Statistics Netherlands asked respondents for the first time in 2019 about addressing undesirable behavior and the results therefore only relate to that year. Whether residents of rural areas are more likely to speak to each other this year about the violation of corona measures than residents of urban areas, next year’s research must show.
It can be imagined that people hold each other to account for not wearing a mask or for not observing the 1.5 meter distance, says Ter Steege in the Volkskrant. But keeping enough distance is a less pressing issue in the countryside than in the city, where people are more on each other’s lips, he explains. “That is why I don’t think you can easily extend the differences between the city and the countryside from this research to the corona rules.”
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