Analysis of factors affecting the improvement of social capital in rural settlements (Case study: Esfandagheh district, Jiroft county)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Faculty of Earth Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Introduction
Social capital is a sociological concept that has been increasingly used by social scientists.
Thus, the main purpose of this research is to check the factors affecting the improvement of social capital in the rural settlements of Esfandagheh District. Based on the mentioned challenges; The basic questions of the research are: 1) What is the status of the rural settlements of Esfandagheh District in terms of social capital? 2) What is the relationship between institutional, social, individual and economic factors with the social capital of the villages of Esfandagheh District? And what are the most important factors affecting the improvement of the social capital of the villagers of Esfandagheh District?
Materials and methods
The current research, in terms of the fundamental purpose and the way of conducting the research, is in the survey research group and according to the data, it is of the quantitative research type. In this research, 30 villages were randomly selected to determine the size of the random sample at the village level. Analysis of demographic characteristics and aggregation of questions to enter the model, and analysis of the structures and relationships expressed in the theoretical framework were performed using path analysis software. Finally, Cronbach's alpha value of 0.79 was got for the present study. Therefore, the value of alpha got in this research is reliable because it is close to 1.
Results and discussion
The results show that the status of social capital among the rural settlements of Esfandagheh District is unfavorable; In such a way that the got average of all social capital indicators is lower than the desired level. The social capital, with an average of 2.942, is lower than the desired state; Therefore, the social capital is in an unfavorable situation in the rural settlements of Esfandagheh District. This result with the findings of Galli et al., (2020); that if social awareness, social trust, social cohesion, social participation, organization and social groups and social network and institutional, social, individual and economic factors are weak in rural settlements, social capital will be in an unfavorable situation. It corresponds; Also, with the findings of Werna (2001) and Up Hoff (2016); who considered social capital as one of the important factors for improving the condition of rural settlements is also consistent.
Based on this, it was found that there is a significant relationship between institutional, social, individual and economic factors and the social capital of villagers. Based on Pearson's correlation coefficient, the results show that there is a significant relationship between individual factors and different indicators of social capital at the level of 0.01. This result with research (Adebayo, 2014); according to which there is a relationship between the institutional, social, individual and economic factors of villagers and social capital; It is aligned. Besides this, the most fundamental factors affecting the improvement of social capital among the rural settlements of Esfandagheh District are institutional, social, individual and economic factors. Therefore, the results show that the significance level got for all institutional, social, individual and economic variables is less than 0.05, so the results can be generalized to the statistical population. Also, the results revealed that the most important factors affecting the improvement of social capital Institutional, social, individual, and economic factors. These results agree with the findings of Dorobantu and Nistoreanu (2012), that the most important influencing factors in the village are the institutional, social, individual and economic factors in order to increase their participation and improve the indicators of social capital in this direction.
Conclusion
In this research, the concept of social capital is studied as a tool for rural settlements. Therefore, if social capital is considered as an infrastructure for rural settlements, it can reduce the negative effects related to this category. Also, with the necessary and executive planning, improvement of individual, social, economic and institutional factors, it is possible to help the process of social capital of villagers in rural settlements.
 

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

English References:
-Adebayo, A.S., 2014. Local Government and the Challenges of Rural Development in Nigeria (1999 to date), IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science, v. 19(4), p. 98-107.
-Adedire, S.A., 2014. Local Government and the Challenges of Rural Development in Nigeria (1999 to date), IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science, v. 19(4), p. 98-107.
-Angelstam, P., Fedoriak, M., Cruz, F., Muñoz-Rojas, J., Yamelynets, T., Manton, M. and Jansson, N., 2021. Meeting places and social capital supporting rural landscape stewardship: A Pan-European horizon scanning. Ecology and Society, v. 26(1).
-Bahl, R.W. and Linn, J.F., 1992. Urban public finance in developing countries: The World Bank.
-Barrios, J.M., Benmelech, E., Hochberg, Y.V., Sapienza, P. and Zingales, L., 2021. Civic capital and social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic☆. Journal of public economics, v. 193, 104-310‏.
-Borgonovi, F. and Andrieu, E., 2020. Bowling together by bowling alone: Social capital and Covid-19. Social Science & Medicine, v. 265, p. 113501.
-Brown, H., Peach, C. and Sonwa, D.J., 2015., Rural local institutions and climate change adaptation in forest communities in Cameroon. Ecology and Society, v. 20(2).
-Choi, S. and Lee, M., 2021. Diversity as an opportunity or a challenge? A cross-national study of ethnic diversity and students’ generalized trust. International Journal of Educational Development, v. 80, p. 102-301.
-Cobbinah, P.B., 2015. Local attitudes towards natural resources management in rural Ghana, Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal.
-Day, Ch., Gu, Q., and Sammons, P., 2016. The impact of leadership on student outcomes: How successful school leaders use transformational and instructional strategies to make a difference. Educational administration quarterly, v. 52(2), p. 221-258.
-Dorobantu, M.R. and Nistoreanu, P., 2012. Rural Tourism and Ecotourism–the Main Priorities in Sustainable Development Orientations of Rural Local Communities in Romania.
-Egreteau, R., 2017. Parliamentary development in Myanmar: an overview of the Union Parliament, 2011-2016, Yangon (Myanmar), The Asia Foundation (Burma)..
-Elgar, F.J., Stefaniak, A. and Wohl, M.J.A., 2020. The trouble with trust: Time-series analysis of social capital, income inequality, and COVID-19 deaths in 84 countries, Social Science & Medicine, v. 263, p. 113-365.
-Fan, V.S. and Mahadevan, R., 2019. The role of social capital and remote Chinese villagers’ well-being. Social Indicators Research, v. 143(3), p. 1109-1128.
-Forsell, T., Tower, J. and Polman, R., 2020. Development of a scale to measure social Capital in Recreation and Sport Clubs. Leisure Sciences, v. 42(1), p. 106-122.
-Fraser, T., 2021. Japanese social capital and social vulnerability indices: Measuring drivers of community resilience 2000–2017. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, v. 52, p. 101-965.
-Frost, P., Campbell, B., Mutamba, M., Mandondo, A. and Kozanayi, W., 2007. In search of improved rural livelihoods in semi-arid regions through local management of natural resources: lessons from case studies in Zimbabwe. World Development, v. 35(11), p. 1961-1974.
-Habes, M., Alghizzawi, M., Salloum, S.A. and Mhamdi, Ch., 2021. Effects of Facebook personal news sharing on building social capital in jordanian universities Recent Advances in Intelligent Systems and Smart Applications, p. 653-670, Springer: International Publishing.‏
-Jamal, T. and Budke, C., 2020. Tourism in a world with pandemics: local-global responsibility and action, Journal of tourism futures, v. 6(2), p. 181-188.
-Lestarini, R., Harmain, R., Wulandhary, S. and Utari, D., 2018. The implementation strategy of customary law aspect in protecting local environment. In E3S Web of Conferences, v. 52, p. 00041,EDP Sciences..
-Muro, M. and Jeffrey, P., 2008. A critical review of the theory and application of social learning in participatory natural resource management processes, Journal of environmental planning and management, v. 51(3), p. 325-344.
-Ohe, Y. and Kurihara, Sh., 2013. Evaluating the complementary relationship between local brand farm products and rural tourism: Evidence from Japan. Tourism Management, v. 35, p. 278-283.
-Sørensen, J.F., 2012. Testing the hypothesis of higher social capital in rural areas: the case of Denmark, Regional Studies, v. 46(7), p. 873-891.
-Simpson, A., Farrelly, N. and Holliday, I., 2018. Routledge handbook of contemporary Myanmar.
-Tsimpo, C. and Wodon, Q., 2018. Residential Piped Water in Uganda: The World Bank.
-Vajja, A. and White, H., 2008. Can the World Bank build social capital? The experience of social funds in Malawi and Zambia. The Journal of Development Studies, v. 44(8), p. 1145-1168.
-Vasylchenko, O.P., Lotiuk, O.S. and Gut, N.Y., 2018. Civil Society as The Subject of Formation of State Policy in the Sphere of Subsoil Use and Protection, Scientific Bulletin of National Mining University, v. 6.
-Zhu, L., Wang, B. and Sun, Y., 2020. Multi-objective optimization for energy consumption, daylighting and thermal comfort performance of rural tourism buildings in north China. Building and Environment, v. 176, p. 106-841.
Researches in Earth Sciences
Volume 13, Issue 3 - Serial Number 51
November 2022
Pages 122-138

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics