Social Capital Components of Forest Dwellers of Forestry Cooperatives in Iran (Case of Siahkal County)

Abstract

The aim of this study was to compare the social capital indicators of members and non-members of cooperatives in Siahkal County. The sample size was calculated by the Cochran formula to include 300 individuals (150 member cooperatives and 150 non-members of the cooperative) that were selected by the stratified random sampling method. The main tool employed in this study was a questionnaire that evaluated the reliability of internal consistency using Cronbach’s alpha. In this research, correlation coefficients, t-tests, Mann-Whitney tests, and multivariate regression were used for testing hypotheses. Results obtained from inferential findings indicated that there was a significant positive relationship at the 1 percent level between the variables of social cooperation and social interaction, social cooperation and social conflict, social cooperation and informal relations network, social cooperation and trust in others, social cooperation and trust in institutions, social cooperation and social partnership, and finally social conflict and informal relations network. Based on the t-test results, most individual indices of members and non-members of forestry cooperatives showed a significant difference with each other at the 1 percent level. Results showed that there was a significant difference between members and non-members of the cooperative in terms of social capital components of forest dwellers except for the component of trust in institutions, which lacked a significant difference. This analysis shows that about 68% of the variation of the dependent variable is determined by independent variables, which were significant here.