A study of the types of social trust and the elements influencing it: The case of the Iranian northern town of sari

Abstract

This article is concerned with the level of social trust, its different types, and the social factors that influence it in the northern Iranian town of Sari, Mazandaran province. For the purpose of our study, this article adopted Giddens' and Toennies's theories as its framework to examine the theoretical issues of social trust. According to Giddens, trust comes in three types: basic, generalized, and abstract. This article, then, investigates the gesellschaft effects of the community and the economical state on the different types of social trust. Our sample contained 320 above 20-years old residents of Sari. When validity and reliability of our questionnaire were tested, we applied survey research to collect data for analysis. The findings indicate that low or high levels of economic state had no effect on the level of social trust in the community under study. The gesellschaft feature of that society was important in the state of social trust, as the more gesellschaft a society is, the lower generalized trust is there. It is while basic and abstract types of trust were rated high in the same society. In contrast to the other two types of trust, however, Scheffe and Duncan Tests revealed that abstract trust was of higher average.