Effective components on social capital in rural production cooperatives in Koohdasht County of Lorestan Province

Abstract

This paper aimed to study the social capital in rural production cooperatives and to analyze factors influencing this capital. The statistical population of the study consisted of 2820 members of 18 rural production cooperatives of Koohdasht County in Lorestan province, 93 of whom were selected using Cochran formula as sample population. In order to increase the accuracy of the data, 100 members were selected by the two-stage random sampling technique, and were interviewed. The reliability of the main scales of the questionnaire was confirmed by Cronbach's alpha coefficients being above 0.70. The questionnaire was validated through getting the comments and opinions of some faculty members and cooperative experts. The results of the study showed that there is a significant difference between the two groups with high and low social capital in terms of gender, marital status, education, income level, the size of owned land, membership record in a cooperative, amount of information about cooperative principals, and the rate of participation in productive activities, decision-making meetings and the training courses held by the cooperatives. Moreover, according to the results of stepwise discriminant analysis, five variables of marital status, the size of owned land, membership record in a cooperative, familiarity with cooperative principals and the rate of participation in productive activities, distinctively discriminated between the two groups with high and low social capital. Key words: Rural production cooperative, social capital, discriminant analysis, Koohdasht County, Lorestan Province, Iran.