A Study on Influential Factors on Collective Identity of Guilaki Citizens

This study investigates the factors that are influential on the collective identity of the majority of Gilaki citizens of Rasht, Iran. The study rests on a survey utilizing a questionnaire as the data gathering instrument. The population is 443,666 Gilaki citizens of the city, adults over 18. The sample size is 383 participants. The understandability of the questions is satisfied by using the face validity of the questionnaire, and the reliability is concerned by Cronbach’s Alpha.
The results show that the degree of the respondents’ inclination towards their local, national, and global identity is from medium to high levels, with the priority to respectively the local identity, national identity, and finally global identity. Also, results indicate that the collective identity has a significant relationship with the feeling of discrimination, intelligibility of the political system, and social interaction. The adjusted coefficient of determination shows that 14.6% of the alterations in collective identity are explained by the independent variables. Social interaction and the intelligibility of the political system, with the regression coefficients of respectively .338 and .148, were effective on collective identity.