Social Capital, Identity, and Social Participation of Shirazian Youths

Participation is considered as foundation of civil society and never loses its importance in a society aiming to progress. This study is an attempt to investigate youth social participation rate and its relationship with identity and social capital. 598 young people of 20-29 years of age in Shiraz, which are selected using multistage cluster sampling, answered the research questionnaire. The respondents were asked about 18 activities as the base for measuring the rate of their participation. The results indicate low level of social participation (4.8 activities in average out of 18 activities). Among demographic variables, only education had significant relationship with participation. Those enjoying more intimate communications, more supportive network (consulting and informative support) and believing more in reciprocity norms have more social participation. Besides, the youth with strong religious and national identity and modern gender identity participate more. According to the results from the research, when mentality is concerned, the youth are eager to participate; however, low rate of new social capital in social network that is supposed to act as empowering resource of performance, does not let them participate in practice.