Investigating the Impact of Social Capital on Improving Economic Indicators in Villages of Zarindshahr

The historical experience of the development process in developed countries has made clear that rural progress is the most prominent one for the sustainable development of a nation and should be the priority of development planning. The growth of the countryside means performing political, social and economic projects for the future of rural development. On the other hand, village progress policies aim to eliminate the severe poverty of rural areas, offer higher standard of living in villages, ensuring new job opportunities, and increase their productivity, and due to the fact that improving economic condition plays a vital part in forming the main infrastructures of any advancement, achieving high economic growth increasingly is felt. Not only the growth of economic sectors is required and necessary, but also it is essential to adjust to appropriate public policies in order to influence on the essentially economic, institutional and social evolution in the shortest possible time.
This study due to its purpose and method is descriptive-analytic and practical, respectively. In the research process, first the theoretical foundations of social capital were studied and based on it and according to the available information about the study region, components, indices and fields were determined. The statistical population of the study consists of all the head of rural households in the city (7927 people) by using Cochran's formula, completed 310 questionnaires randomly. In this research, the formal method has been used to produce more reliable data. For this purpose, after the compilation, the questionnaires were given to experts, maverick scientists and professors, and then the comments were collected, necessary amendments were made. Cronbach's alpha was used to determine the reliability of the research.
The results from this study suggest that there is a statistically significant relationship between social capital in different dimensions, including public trust, social participation and community cohesion with economic indicators of rural areas. The results of single-sample T test show that among social capital variables, two variables of social trust with an average of 2.861 and a social participation variable with an average of 2.810 are unfavorable and the social cohesion variable with an average of 1.019 is in the optimal situation and the variable Promotion of economic development indicators with an average of 425.2 is at an unfavorable level. Also, the results of multiple regression demonstrate that from the three components of community cohesion, social participation and public trust, the two components of cohesion and social participation have beneficial impacts on the promotion of rural economic indicators and the social trust component does not show a significant level and the indicator the rural economy is not influential