The Role of Social Capital of the Citizens of Ilam Province in Attracting Tourists

The social capital concept is proposed as Interdisciplinary concept in both social and economic analysis of communities'' development especially in tourism extension. This study aims at analyzing Ilam''s citizens'' social capital in tourist attractions. This research is the analytical descriptive and applied one. The statistical population of the present research consists of Ilam''s citizens and its tourists in 2014-2015. The sampling method is categorical random way in combination with 323 people amongst Ilam''s families and 242 people for tourists was conducted. The data collection tool includes social capital and tourists'' questionnaire. The results of analysis of hypotheses reveals that there is a meaningful relationship between Ilam''s citizens social capital and tourists attractions. The finding of regression test shows That all three dimensions، i. e، relational، structural and cognitive of social capital have effects on tourists attractions، so that the cognitive dimension، itself does some changes about 88% in the dependent variable of tourist attraction. Also، the structured and relational dimensions in social capital made totally 60 percent change in the dependent variable and at last، the three relational، cognitive and structural variables were 63 percent.