Investigating the Relationship between Perception of Transparency in Officials' Religiosity According to Nahj al-Balagha Teachings and Citizens' Social Trust

 Social trust is one of the social phenomena that plays a vital role in human relationships and interactions and provides the cohesion and integration of society by creating strong social bonds. In the meantime, transparency in the various elements of the government can also be considered as an effective mechanism to support citizens' rights. It is worth mentioning that hypocrisy is especially emphasized in Islam as an anti-social trend. Considering the importance of the subject and the gap in the previous studies in this field, this research aims to examine the relationship between perception of transparency in the religiosity of officials according to the teachings of Nahj al-Balagha and the social trust of citizens.

 The present study is practical in terms of its purpose, and descriptive and field-based in terms of the method of data collection. In order to investigate the relationship between research variables in the field, 428 MA students, PhD candidates and faculty members of Tehran, Mazandaran, Qom and Semnan universities were selected as a statistical population by available sampling method. Standard questionnaires were used to collect data and to analyze the data, confirmatory factor analysis tests and structural equation modeling on LISREL software and mean test on SPSS software version 16 were used. In the present study, all ethical considerations were observed and the authors reported no conflict of interests.

 The results of the statistical tests indicated that the perception of transparency in the religiosity of the officials had a positive and significant effect on the social trust of the citizens (P=0.59; T=8.53). This means that the more transparency in the religiousness of officials is observed and perceived, the more social trust among citizens there will be. In addition, the analysis of the responses of the statistical community indicates that the level of transparency in the religiosity of officials and the level of social trust of citizens is more than the average value.

 The results of the present study indicate that according to the obtained factor loadings, improving each of the indicators of transparency in the religiosity of the officials leads to the improvement of the level of social trust of the citizens. Therefore, according to the current status of each of the components, it is necessary for the society officials to try to improve the transparency of each of the components of religiosity in order to improve the social trust of the citizens.