An Investigation of the Relationship between Social Trust and Political Participation (a Case Study of Citizens of Gorgan, Golestan, Iran

The aim of the present study is to investigate political participation with an emphasis on the role of social trust among citizens of Gorgan in Iran. The theoretical framework is based on the theories of scholars, namely as Lipset, Almond, Verba, Engellhart, Nelson and Huntington. Methodologically, this research study can be categorized as a survey whose data has been collected by using a researcher-made questionnaire in the research field. The population of the present study consisted of all citizens of Gorgan, north of Iran, based on which 407 people were selected as a sample through stratified random sampling and thereby they were studied. In doing so, face validity was used to prove the validity of research variables and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to assess the reliability of the research tools, which were determined for social trust (0.778) and political participation (0.780) respectively. The results of testing the hypotheses showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between social trust and its different dimensions (i.e., institutional trust, public trust and personal trust) and political participation and its different dimensions (electoral behavior and active participation). Furthermore, the results of the regression analysis indicates that, in total 61 percent of the changes in dependent variable can be explained by variables of social trust, age, gender, marital status, and education.