The Analysis of the Social Capital on Nomadic Population Case Study: Chardavol Township, Ilam Province

Nomadic society is an active population in Iran that has been taken into account by the policy makers and planners over the recent decades due to their crucial role in production of the raw materials and border protection. Nevertheless, in recent years, due to the increased various problems, the nomadic population has considerably decreased. Therefore, analysis of their social problems such as social capital is one of the most important measures that can be dealt with by researchers in order to find proper solutions for their problems. To this end, the present study aimed to investigate the status of social capital and its effective factors in nomadic population focusing on nomadic population of Chardavol Township in Ilam province, Iran. Due to the paucity of the accurate information on the number of nomadic households in Chardavol, 120 households were considered as statistical sample. SPSS software was used to analyze the collected data. The results showed that the average of the three main indicators of social capital (participation, trust and integrity) among the nomadic population of Chardavol was 3.74, 3.73 and 3.81, respectively regarding the confidence level of 99% which was higher than the baseline average (3) and higher than average. Results revealed that the average social capital was 3.76 which was higher than the baseline average at confidence level of 99%. The results of analysis of factors affecting the social capital of the nomadic population showed that there was a significant relationship between three variables such as access to essential facilities, access to services and distance to essential centers and social capital among the understudied variables, whose correlation coefficients were 0.287, 0.481 and -0.398 respectively.