Digital Connectivity and Trust Reallocation in an Early Internet Context: Evidence from Pre-Arab Spring Egypt

How does early-stage digital connectivity relate to how people distribute trust across social targets? Using nationally representative World Values Survey (Wave 5) data from Egypt in 2008 (N=3,051), we test whether personal computer use (a proxy for early digital capability) is associated with higher trust in socially distant out-groups (people of another religion and people of another nationality) and lower trust in close local ties (neighbors). We estimate logistic regression models with governorate-clustered standard errors and report average marginal effects (percentage-point differences in the probability of reporting "trust completely" or "trust somewhat"), adjusting for demographic and socioeconomic factors, urban residence, employment, religiosity, and political engagement. Compared with respondents who never used a computer, occasional and frequent users are more likely to trust out-groups (+7 to +11 percentage points) and less likely to report high trust in neighbors (-2 to -8 percentage points). A within-respondent trust-gap index (neighbor trust minus mean out-group trust on the 4-point scale) is lower among computer users, consistent with reduced parochialism. Results are similar when we use the full four-point trust scale and when we estimate weighted linear probability models using the WVS sex-correcting weights. Because the data are cross-sectional, the findings are descriptive associations consistent with "trust reallocation," but they cannot separate exposure effects from selection into early computer use.