Peer Effects of the Same and Different Religions on Faithfulness: A Comparison between Indonesia and India

Abstract

By employing questionnaire surveys to empirically examine peer effects on religious faithfulness, this study mainly compares Muslims in Indonesia and India as examples. This study uses religious restrictions on foods as the main component of the questionnaire. A total of two variables were selected to examine peer effects: (1) the percentage of respondents’ close friends who follow a different religion and (2) the percentage of people in the respondents’ city who follow the same faith. Ordinary least squares/generalized least squares regression was conducted, and six models were estimated. The results reveal that Indian/Indonesian respondents are more affected by those who follow the same/different religions, respectively, suggesting that relatively smaller groups have larger peer effects on religious faithfulness. Although further investigations are required, these symmetric results may be attributed to the fact that tensions among people from different religions are high/low, and that the percentage of people who follow a different faith in the respondents’ city is high/low in India and Indonesia, respectively.