Dimensions of Human security and their implications on Corruption perception: A cross-sectional evidence from 50 countries

Perceived intensity of public sector corruption, or Corruption perception (CP), is known to have a devastating effect on societies, generating a ‘‘culture of distrust’’. Research has suggested that CP’s consequence is more severe than corruption itself. On the premise that CP is a function of Human security (HS), this paper was designed to fulfil two primary objectives using the latest dataset (7th round: 2017 to 2021) from the World Values Survey. The first was to identify distinct components of HS, and the second was to examine whether those identified components of HS have direct implications on CP. This study used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for the first objective, a data reduction technique wherein multiple items can be reduced into a simple set of indicators. And for the second objective, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression was used. The results from PCA indicated that HS could be assessed reliably using five distinct dimensions- Neighborhood, Fear of crime, National, Personal/Family, and Victimhood. The Neighborhood HS was high in Germany, Macau, Singapore, and Taiwan, while it was low in Zimbabwe, Brazil, Mexico, and Guatemala. Countries that scored very high in CP were Peru, Serbia, and Mexico, whereas countries that scored low in CP were Germany, New Zealand, and Vietnam. The multivariate findings showed that an increase in HS (all the five dimensions) decreases CP, indicating an inverse relationship. That said, the consequence of the Neighborhood and National dimension of HS on CP was more prominent than the other remaining dimension of HS. The findings highlight that policy measures to contain public sector corruption can be achieved through effective delivery of stable HS.