Sociological Explanation of Religiousness Effect on In-Group Social Capital Case Study: Isfahan City

The main aim of this article is theoretical and empirical explanation of an analytical model in which religiousness is specified as an exogenous variable and social capital is defined as endogenous variable. Definition of each specified parameters in the model has a theoretical foundation. Theoretical frame is prepared on the basis of some key theorists including Durkheim, Weber, Berger, Malinovski, Asliner, Fokoyama, Coleman and Putnam. Weight composition of observed variables, in order to definition of latent constructs, was conducted by second-order factor analysis. Research method has been survey and the technique of data gathering was questionnaire which its validity and reliability have been acceptable theoretically and statistically. The population was all citizens who have been 15 years old and over and dwelling in the city of Isfahan. Sample size was 384 cases who were selected based on a quota sampling design by age-group, gender and the city region of residency. The results shown that levels of religiousness and social capital, for the majority in the population, has been around average and high on the defined scales and just a few proportion of the studied population are located on the low level of the scale. Hypothesis testing showed that there is a significant effect of religiousness on social capital. (R-Squared = 0.14, Sig < 0.05). Among different dimensions of religiousness, religious beliefs or ideological dimension had has the strongest effect on social capital (R-Squared=0.09), while other aspects consist of ritualistic (R-Squared=0.08), consequential (R-Squared=0.06) and experimental (R-Squared=0.05) had have weaker effects respectively. The effects were statistically significance with at least 95% confidence level.