The impact of the Mastercard foundation scholarship programme on social capital formation among university students : a case of the university of Pretoria, South Africa

Abstract

This study determines whether the Mastercard Foundation (MCF) Scholarship Program causally influences the creation of cognitive social capital among University of Pretoria scholarship recipients, by using an online lab experiment and a post-experimental survey. Cognitive social capital, which is based on commonly shared norms among members, leads to honest and cooperative behaviour. It is necessary for information flow ease, transaction costs reduction, and allowing communities to deal with social dilemmas, which are fundamental for community development. To capture the impact of the MCF Program, the study compared MCF scholars (treated) and non-MCF scholars (controls) against levels of trust, reciprocity, altruism, cooperation, in-group favouritism and out-group discrimination. The results show that the Program has no statistically significant impact on levels of trust (MW p=0.3504), reciprocity (MW p=0.1688), altruism (MW p=0.8963), and cooperation (MW p=0.6503). The Program, however, has had statistically significant impact on levels of in-group favouritism and out-group discrimination. The post-experimental survey showed that MCF and non-MCF subjects were similar in terms of stated pro-social behaviour perceptions, and in-group social capital creation. In my study, we found that self-selection is not a significant source of bias because we sampled around 78% of the MCF population. We had 102 of approximately 130 MCF scholars on the scholarship at the time. I recommend that the Program should invest in greater education of its scholars on the importance of cooperation, altruism, social responsibility, trust, and trustworthiness to boost cognitive social capital formation. Keywords: Cognitive social capital, Mastercard Foundation Scholarship, Dictator game, Trust game, Public Goods game, Bomb Risk Elicitation Task.