Designing and Explaining the Model of the Effectiveness of Social Capital on Waste Recycling (Case Study: Citizens of Tehran)

Increasing population of cities, urban waste management, and different mechanisms of engaging the citizens to participate in the process of urban waste management, is one of the most important challenges of urban management, especially in metropolitans. Citizens’ participation and any success in waste management inevitably have many environmental and economic positive outcomes. This research is in pursuit of dealing with the effect of citizens’ social capital on increasing their participation in municipal waste management in Tehran. This research methodically uses three methods: survey, documentary study, and scenario building. The statistical society of the study is citizens of Tehran. 950 cases were selected as statistical sample from 22 districts of Tehran by multi-stage cluster sampling. The results show that the variables of awareness of affairs with β = 0.544, charitable participation with β = 0.338, formal participation with β = 0.306, religious participation with β = 0.239, social trust with β = 0.138, level of education with β = 0.132, age with β = 0.125, and finally satisfaction with the municipality with β = 0.124, respectively have the highest statistical relationship with the variable participation in waste segregation. The values of the regression model shows that the variable satisfaction with the municipality explains +0.125 of the changes in participation in waste segregation from source, age -0.125, education +0.132, social trust +0.138, religious participation +0.239, formal participation +0.306, charitable participation +0.338, and awareness +0.544. Finally, using regression model data, five possible scenarios are presented. In just the fifth scenario, if the efficiency of the effective variables is at the highest level (very high), the municipal revenue of the waste segregation from the source per year is more than one thousand billion Rials.