This study examines how the socio-ecology of honour shapes the justification of violence, focusing on resource scarcity and inadequate law enforcement at both national and individual levels. Using World Values Survey data and a multilevel design (57 countries, N = 73,838), we found that personal experiences of economic precarity and witnessing crime predict stronger justification of violence. These relationships were moderated by country-level indicators of honour-related socio-ecology: national-level low income, unequal distribution of resources, and low adherence to the rule of law, used as proxies of resource scarcity and inadequate law enforcement. In countries with weak socio-ecological roots of honour (higher income, lower inequality, and stricter rule of law), personal experiences of precarity and crime exposure are linked to stronger justification of violence, whereas in countries with strong socio-ecological roots of honour, the effect sizes of these associations were negligible. We discuss the social comparison, cultural fit, and cultural backlash hypotheses as possible explanations of the observed interaction effect between national- and individual-level factors.
Uysal et al. (Thu,) studied this question.