Role of Social Capital in Citrus Growers’ Empowerment in Sari County, Northern Iran
Subject Areas : Family and social enterprise
1 - استادیار گروه ترویج و آموزش کشاورزی، واحد ساری، دانشگاه آزاد اسلامی، ساری، ایران
Keywords: Social capital, Sari, empowerment, Citrus growers,
Abstract :
The study aimed at investigating the role of social capital incitrus growers’ empowerment in Sari County. The statisticalpopulation comprised 12 800 citrus growers in Sari County.The stratified random sampling was employed in this study inan attempt to recruit 291 individuals as prospective participants.Data collection tool was a questionnaire. In order to establishits content validity, several copies of the questionnaire weredistributed among professionals and experts, their opinions onthe validity of the questionnaire were polled, and the necessaryadjustments were applied based on their insightful comments.Cronbach's alpha was reported as 0.87 for the questionnaire.SPSS (Ver. 16) was used for data analysis. The average socialcapital level and citrus growers’ empowerment were at a highlevel. The indices of meaning, trust, impact, competence, andself-determination ranked first to fifth among the citrus growers’empowerment in Sari. The awareness, participation, interactions,solidarity, and social trust were prioritized from the first to thefifth among the citrus growers’ social capital in Sari. The regressionanalysis showed that 12.4 percent of the citrus growers’empowerment variance was explained by social capital, andthat social capital played an important role accounting for 35.6percent of citrus growers’ empowerment.
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