جغرافیا و برنامهریزی محیطی (Jan 2013)
An Investigation of Effective Factors on the Extent of Citizens’ Trust to Municipality Case Study of Neyshabur’s Citizens
Abstract
Extended abstract1- IntroductionTrust is considered as the most important factor in order paradigm and it plays a central role in the thoughts of such sociologists as Durkheim and Tunis. In micro and macro levels, it may make people’s negative and positive feelings evident. It is the most significant factor of social order and is deemed as one of the pillars of social property. Furthermore, the empirical study of trust in a society may be a feasible solution in order to achieve the higher culture of citizenship. So far, sociologists and philosophers have been concerned about the issue of stability or change in human societies. In every society, stability has an interwoven relationship with social solidarity and social solidarity could be understood in the relationship with change’s factors and paths. The presence of trust among different social organizations, groups and people is of important and effective factors in society’s solidarity and harmony. If social trust gets hurt through the effects of different factors, social order and solidarity face some challenges too. Among issues related to cities and citizens, creating trust to municipalities is of the main concerns in the realm of urban planning. As an important public and social institute in the cities, municipalities playing the role of planning, managing and delivering public services should act in such a way that people believe that they are useful and available. On the other hand, because of supplying financial resources and collecting public participations, municipalities should protect their public popularity and legitimacy so that they may attract the trust of all people in the societies. Therefore, due to the importance of trust in the presence of order, solidarity and participation in the societies, their institutes and organizations, the current study attempts at investigating the extent of citizens’ trust to the Neishabur Municipality and finding out the factors effective on it. 2- MethodologyThe current research is of descriptive-analytical type which has been carried out through library research and field study. The main part of this study is survey which data is gathered by questionnaires and interviews with citizens. Research population consists of families residing in Neishabur. Sampling base is family unit. People included in our sample are chosen by regular multilevel clustering. For so doing, we consider urban districts as clusters; then, several blocks are randomly chosen in every block; ultimately, several families are sampled by systematic random method and interviewed. To analyze and describe data collected, SPSS, Pearson correlation coefficient, variance analysis, t-test and multivariate regression are used. 3- DiscussionAmong understudy individual variables (education, marital status, occupation type, gender, age, and income), only respondents’ marital status and age have significant relationship with the extent of their trust to municipality and hypotheses related to these two variables are confirmed. However, there is a converse relationship between age and the extent of individuals’ trust to municipality in such a way that the higher the age of people, the lower their trust to the municipality. Furthermore, there is a significant relationship between prejudice experience, institutional trust, security feeling, bureaucratic corruption, needs satisfaction expectancy, membership in official groups and membership in unofficial groups and the extent of trust to the municipality. Therefore, hypotheses related to these variables are confirmed. Prejudice experience, institutional trust, security feeling, bureaucratic corruption, needs satisfaction expectancy and membership in unofficial groups are entered in multivariate analysis model and they account for 86% of variance of dependent variable (trust to the municipality). Furthermore, membership in unofficial groups, age, gender, marital status, income and occupation are put way from the model.4- ConclusionsFindings indicate that in the sample investigated, 30% of respondents have low, 50% medium and 20% high trust to the municipality. Therefore, it can be said that most of the respondents have medium trust to the municipality.In multivariate analysis, corruption and prejudice experience have a converse relationship with trust to the municipality, indicating that some respondents has seen some cases of bribery and injustice and/or some people have heard some things through other people, which has been affected their trust to the municipality.It should be recognized that as a social institute, municipalities may perform their roles if they involve sufficiently in trust-creating process and enjoy trustful atmosphere, or else, they would lose their time and energy in a trustless atmosphere and they would also lose their social reputation, social support and social popularity.Therefore, municipalities should try to increase their legitimacy, popularity and citizens’ trust from medium to high level and should consider the continuance of legitimacy and trust. 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