A comparative study of citizens' security feeling in the east, west and center of Hormozgan province stressing the role of social dimensions of balanced development

Security feeling is a psychological-social phenomenon which has various dimensions. This feeling is emanated from individuals’ direct and indirect experiences of their surrounding environment, and different people experience it in various ways. There are many common threats that could be seen more or less in all societies and lead to lack of social security feeling. Security feeling as a social variable could be affected by many social and individual factors. The present research is aimed at comparing Hormozgan province (East, West and Center) citizens’ security feeling and the impact of social dimensions of balanced development on it.

The present research, in terms of objective, was of applied type and has been conducted using survey method. Using Cochran formula, sample size of 384 people was selected in Hormozgan province, and a multi-stage cluster sampling method and a questionnaire was used for collecting data. And the validity of the content data collection tool and its reliability have been measured by Cronbach's alpha method. T-tests, ANOVA, Pearson correlation, regression and path analysis were used in predicting and explaining the security feeling influence on various components of social dimensions of development.

The results of the research indicated that the security feeling in the three studied areas is evaluated at an average level, but the social dimensions of balanced development are not equally developed in these areas. In other words, these dimensions in the east and west of the province have had the least impact, compared to the center.The findings of the research indicate that in “Lengeh” and “Minab”, the independent variables (social dimensions of development) social justice, social welfare, social sustainability and quality of life have been able to explain merely about 17.4 and 15.1 percent of the variance of the dependent variable (sense of security), respectively, while in Bandar Abbas city, the independent variables explained about 41.7 percent of the variance of the dependent variable.