RT Article
T1 Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Religiosity: Evidence from Germany
JF Journal for the scientific study of religion
VO 62
IS 2
SP 293
OP 311
A1 Kanol, Eylem
A1 Michalowski, Ines 1976-
A2 Michalowski, Ines 1976-
LA English
YR 2023
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1848847726
AB How does a major external shock that potentially threatens the community and the individual impact religiosity in the context of ongoing secularization? Do individuals in a rich and secularized society such as Germany react to potential community-level (sociotropic) and individual-level (egotropic) threat with heightened religiosity? We estimate multilevel regression models to investigate the impact of sociotropic and egotropic existential security threats associated with the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals’ religiosity. Our data come from a rolling cross-sectional online survey conducted in Germany among 7,500 respondents across 13 waves in 2020. Our findings suggest that a global health pandemic such as COVID-19 increases individuals’ perception of existential and economic threat, which, in turn, leads to an increase in religiosity. However, this relationship is only true for egotropic existential security threat but not for sociotropic threat. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings.
K1 economic insecurity
K1 Existential security
K1 Germany
K1 Covid-19
K1 Religiosity
DO 10.1111/jssr.12834