The role of social capital in the readiness of individuals before the earthquake (Case study: Citizens of Kerman)

Natural disasters, such as earthquakes, are a universal issue, and lack of readiness in this area may lead to significant damages. Meanwhile, social capital through individuals and groups’ cooperation and enabling people to participate in collective actions are one of the effective factors affecting the readiness of communities against earthquakes. Therefore, the main purpose of this research is to investigate the role of social capital in the readiness of citizens before the earthquake. This research is a descriptive and survey type of research. The required data were collected using library studies and field surveys at the household level. The research population is households in Kerman city and based on Cochran formula, the sample size is measured as 350 households. After data collection, the differences in amount of having social capital is analyzed using one-way ANOVA and Turkey test and also correlation between the amount of social capital and economic-social base of households, is analyzed using Pearson correlation. The results of this study show that there’s a difference among different areas in enjoying social capital factors, but this amount of social capital is measured in low level which the average of social capital of all households is 24.60 on scale of 10 to 46, which is low in comparison to the average theoretical social capital (Mean = 30), on the other hand, there’s a significant correlation between the level of households enjoying social capital with the level of socioeconomic status.