Building Societal Resilience: Subjective Financial Security, Institutional and Security Evaluations, and Declared Readiness to Contribute to National Defense in Estonia and Lithuania

Societal resilience depends partly on citizens’ resources, evaluations of institutions, and declared readiness to contribute to national defense. This study examines associations among subjective financial security, institutional and security evaluations, and declared readiness to contribute to national defense in Estonia and Lithuania. Adult survey datasets contain 1005 Estonian and 1004 Lithuanian respondents. The primary outcome is a single five-category item asking whether respondents would defend their country in any available way. The original three-item composite is assessed only as an exploratory sensitivity measure. Weighted regressions adjust for age, gender, and education and use corresponding income and ethnicity specifications in both countries. Subjective financial security is positively associated with institutional and security evaluations, which are positively associated with declared readiness. Adjusted statistical indirect associations are positive in Estonia (0.248; 95% bootstrap CI [0.197, 0.302]) and Lithuania (0.271; [0.216, 0.329]). Primary categorical income and ethnicity tests provide insufficient evidence of moderation. Estonia’s direct financial-security association is less consistent in ordinal sensitivity models, and an income-trend result depends on a restrictive coding assumption. The findings concern cross-sectional observed-score associations rather than causal mediation. The revised outcome definition separates personal intention from evacuation preparedness and defense-spending preferences; measurement limitations and possible national non-equivalence remain.