Journal of Operational Research and Its Applications ( Applied Mathematics ) - Lahijan Azad University

Social capital can be considered as one of the most important ideas and concepts of social sciences. The attractiveness and importance of the concept of social capital is that this term is used as a bridge between sociology, economics and politics. In the current social system, social capital is considered as one of the fundamental indicators of the growth and development of any society. Numerous researches have shown that advanced societies have higher levels of social capital such as trust, participation, solidarity and stability, but social capital and its relationship with development have been neglected in Iran. Considering the importance and effective role that social capital can have in the development of each province, this research seeks to measure and rank each province in terms of the amount of social capital. First, by studying the existing research literature and consulting with organizational experts and academic elites, social capital measurement indicators and sub-indices were determined. For this purpose, each province was examined in terms of the indicators of social support, cooperation, civil cooperation (official membership and continuous activity in non-governmental organizations), cooperation (non-continuous, informal and voluntary activity when necessary), social participation and trust. With the tool and technique of data coverage analysis, the rank of each province was determined in terms of the amount of social capital. The findings showed that provinces such as South Khorasan, North Khorasan and Lorestan have a high rank in terms of social capital due to the benefit of high cohesion and integration which is manifested in the desire for economic interactions in the form of agriculture and small industries. This is despite the fact that Tehran and Alborz provinces are ranked low in terms of cohesion and integration due to the influence of factors such as the excessive growth of marginalization and the consequent alarming increase in social harms, and occupy the last ranks in terms of social capital.