Explanation of Influential Factors in Citizen’s Social Participation (research at

Abstract

AbstractCitizen’s participation in decision- making and urban affairs is one of the important issues in societies. Sothis study aims to explain some of the sociological and psychological factors that are influential in citizen’ssocial participation in urban affairs.Research method of this study was survey and to measure independent variables (social satisfaction, socialverify, assessing participation consequences, belief in participation, participation experiences andimprovement motivation) and dependent variable (social participation rate), we selected 700 heads of familyfrom Isfahan’s seven municipality zones that was based on multi -stage sampling. These respondents hadbeen chosen as the final sample and filled out prepared questionnaires.Statistical methods included one way ANOVA, Multiple regression and Path analysis. In order to measurethe path coefficient, such as total casual effects, indirect effects, standard path coefficients and multiplecorrelation coefficients for structural equations, we used the Lisrel Method. All of the statistical tests anddata were analyzed by SPSS16 software.Results show that most of Isfahan citizens have ae high rate of participation in urban affairs. The othervariables such as participation consequences, participation experience and improvement motivation havebeen influential in citizen’s participation behavior. On the whole,according to the path analysis, the power ofthe independent variable in explaining the variable of the dependant variance was 63%.The rest of that, 37%,refers to the effects of other variables that were not studied here.∗

Keywords

• Keywords: Agency
• assessing participation consequences
• improvement motivation
• social satisfaction and