The Study of Social Capital and Its Impact on Social Participation: Bandar Abbas, Iran

Abstract

Today, social participation is an important factor in the development process. The main purpose of this study was to measure the social capital and its impact on social participation. Theoretical framework of this study is based on Putnam and Inglehart regarding social capital and Lipset and Rush regarding background variables. The method is survey and data was collected through questionnaire. Survey population consists of 18 year olds and older who have lived in the city of Bandar Abbas. Sample size of 271 was obtained by multistage cluster sampling method. Our findings show that formal participation in males is more than females. The mean of social participation is higher among married individuals compare to singles. Multivariate linear regression results also show that the independent variables entered into the equation, the highest and lowest levels of influence on dependent variable of total social participation is social trust (0.31) and the network of relations (0.14), respectively. Overall, the model explains about 22% of the variability of social participation.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p1712