A Comparative Study of the Attitudes of the Authorities, Experts, Tradesmen, Businessmen, and Smugglers towards Causes and Consequences of smuggling goods in Boushehr

The present study intends to “investigate the cultural causes and consequences of smuggling goods in Boushehr from the points of view of the authorities, experts, businessmen, tradesmen, and smugglers”. The eight hypotheses posed in the study consider cultural causes of smuggling goods (containing social, individual and administrative levels), cultural consequences (containing cultural, social, and religious levels), as well as variables such as age and education. The research method employed in this study is descriptive-survey. The subject of the study is the total population of Boushehr (225297), the authorities and experts involved in cultural issues (21000), and tradesmen and smugglers (5000). Due to the large number of the population under study, ultimately, a simple random sampling method was employed through which 400 people were selected with a reasonable proportion of the total population (290 authorities and experts, 60 businessmen and tradesmen, and 50 smugglers). Data were collected via two questionnaires made by the researchers. The collected data then were analyzed via descriptive statistics (frequency distribution, percentage, mode, mean) and also inferential statistics (Colmogrov- Smirinov Test, HSD (Toki) Test, One –way and two-way ANOVA). The results show that the attitudes of the three groups towards the influence of each of the levels of cultural factors on smuggling are different. The authorities and experts’ agreements on the influence of cultural factors (social, individual, administrative) on smuggling are significant to a great extent, and that of the businessmen and tradesmen are also significant to some extent, at about 5% level of significance. However, variables such as age and education have no significant influence on the attitudes towards smuggling goods