Role of Social Capital in Citrus Growers’ Empowerment in Sari County, Northern Iran

The study aimed at investigating the role of social capital in citrus growers’ empowerment in Sari County. The statistical population comprised 12 800 citrus growers in Sari County. The stratified random sampling was employed in this study in an attempt to recruit 291 individuals as prospective participants. Data collection tool was a questionnaire. In order to establish its content validity, several copies of the questionnaire were distributed among professionals and experts, their opinions on the validity of the questionnaire were polled, and the necessary adjustments were applied based on their insightful comments. Cronbach's alpha was reported as 0.87 for the questionnaire. SPSS (Ver. 16) was used for data analysis. The average social capital level and citrus growers’ empowerment were at a high level. The indices of meaning, trust, impact, competence, and self-determination ranked first to fifth among the citrus growers’ empowerment in Sari. The awareness, participation, interactions, solidarity, and social trust were prioritized from the first to the fifth among the citrus growers’ social capital in Sari. The regression analysis showed that 12.4 percent of the citrus growers’ empowerment variance was explained by social capital, and that social capital played an important role accounting for 35.6 percent of citrus growers’ empowerment.