The Study of Effective Factors on Rural Women's Social Trust: A Case Study of Three Villages in Three Iranian Provinces

The goal of the present paper has been investigating social trust and the factors affecting it among women in three villages of three different Iranian provinces. The two research questions of the study are: 1. How is social trust perceived by rural women? 2. What factors affect rural women’s social trust? The data were collected by distributing a questionnaire among a sample of 300 women coming from three villages: Noghondar (Razavi Khorasan), Kooshk Hezar (Fars), andTangsorkh (Kohkilooye and Boyer Ahmad), showing that social trust among rural women is at a medium level. The finding furthermore indicate that more income, marriage, a lower level of development, more interrelationships among families, a higher level of welfare, a lower tendency towards traditionalism, and having more access to mass media would increase social trust among rural women, while family size, level of education, and age do not have any significant relationship with social trust. The study suggests that in order to prevent a decline in social trust among rural women, policy makers and social planners should focus further on social relationships among the individuals in rural areas.